A simple electrical on-off switch would have done the job of turning my MARVELOUS MACHINE on and off. But a simple switch wouldn’t have told the story I needed to tell.
My MARVELOUS MACHINE is ‘driven’ by steam. To properly control suck a divide we needed a mechanical throttle, much like what one would find in an old steam train engine. I had built a similar throttle for our train steam engine last year. I had considered using the same file but I didn’t need a reverse on this machine.
To build the throttle I first needed a segment of a cogged wheel. I built the teeth which I would use to cut out the sprocket. I then used the jigsaw tool to create this vector.
I built up various shapes using the drawing tools and then combined them to create the long handle, pull lever and various other bots and pieces.
I was originally going to use a tapered base but opted for a box design because of space considerations. In the screen shot below the shapes for the pieces are created. A few last pieces still need to be merged together.
This shot has all of the final vectors. The five boxes on the left were plasma cut from 1/8″ thick plate steel. The pieces on the right side were all cut from 3/16″ plate steel.
I cut the box pieces first on our MultiCam plasma cutter simply because the machine was already set up for 1/8″ thick material. As fast as the pieces came off the machine I ground up the edges and tacked them together. I then welded the corners up and used a sanding disk to smooth the welds.
The throttle lever was assembled with a combination of bolts and welding. It too went together in a hurry. There is a bolt on access panel in the bottom box to facilitate mounting an electric micro switch inside which will be actuated by the lever.
