Burners 101

[Mikey98118]

1/8” IP thread is 1/8” IP or IPS (iron pipe, or iron pipe standard). Thread dies can be used to make lamp rod thread (1/8-27) on the outside of 1/8” water pipe (designated size; actual outside diameter of 1/8” pipe is .405”). This is parallel thread, and is not to be confused with tapered 1/8” NPT (national pipe thread); it can be used on the cut off ends of pipe nipples, with the other end used to mount your gas fitting or needle valve to. If your pipe is schedule #80, MIG tips can be threaded directly into it.

    This means that your gas jet can be easily mounted in the saddle of a

MENSI High BTU Sand Casting Aluminum Venturi Burner with lamp thread nuts and flat washers from the lamp section of your local hardware store, so that you can ignore the awkward British thread.

[twigg]

Mikey, just to clarify, am I reading this right: to tune the burner, you'd screw the lamp-threaded pipe nipple in or out to move the mig tip back and forth? Then a screw added into the side of the saddle inlet to lock it in place once it's tuned? Also, is there an obvious way to mount a 3/4" NPT nipple to the 1" BSP outlet that I'm not aware of, or is this one of those "get crafty" moments?

[Mikey98118]

Yes and no. Yes, the point of the external lamp thread on the gas pipe is to allow you to adjust its depth back and forth to hit the sweet spot. No screw is needed to trap the tube in position; that gas pipe is trapped within a hole in the saddle by lamp nuts and flat washers, which can be tightened against that cross piece securing it in position and at true right angles to the cross piece (saddle); this will work with one of the cast aluminum parts, or on both sides of a drilled flat bar that you can bend over the end of a funnel shape, or in a hole drilled into a sheet metal cover that has air openings cut into it (think fender washer)

[Alphafarrier]

Sorry to hijack this thread, but I have a quick question.

 

I seem to recall reading somewhere on the forum that Mikey said he was no longer bevelling the inside edge of the choke sleeves on his burners.  Can anyone confirm this?

[Another FrankenBurner]

On 2/11/2021 at 1:57 AM, Mikey98118 said:

Another change is the choke sleeve; I have dropped the outward taper at its rear, which was overkill, and reduced its ability to modify burner performance.

Is this what you mean?  Page 96 of burners 101.

[Alphafarrier]

That’s the one!  Thanks!

[Mikey98118]

It is good to remind casual readers that, while circumstance alter cases,' it doesn't alter first principles. Small burners often need a little gentle de-tuning, because they are such hotrods as to interfere in their employment. In this case, such small burners are easily tuned for complete combustion; this results in a very hot flame. Small burners are NOT so easily tuned for a generous turn-down range, which can be quite irritating. Thus, what constitutes best performance changes, but the principles of flow do not change one little bit; they are simply applied differently to obtain the best results 

[Mikey98118]

So, how do you apply principles of flow successfully to your own particulars? That's the million dollar question isn't it?. When repurposing parts for burners, let the solutions that companies have already spent time and effort coming up with serve to answer questions on your burner. Not just water, gas, or air flow; these are obvious. Less obvious is plastic flow in 3D printer nozzles, or chopped meat flow in Sausage grinder tubes. But the low cost answers these parts provide to the  easy application or flow as just as important, 

[Mikey98118]

 Metric tubing for gas pipes

 

6mm O.D. (0.236”) by 4mm I.D. (0.157”) by 250mm (9.842”) long stainless-steel tubing is available through Amazon.com in small amounts; this tubing should accommodate both  1/4"-27 thread for MIG contact tips, as well as metric thread for 3D printer nozzles. The tubing’s smaller inside diameter will improve gas flow, and its smaller outside diameter will improve air flow in miniature burners.

    6mm is 0.136”. 5/16” hose fittings are 0.13125”. A ¼” drum sander can quickly enlarge these fittings for silver brazing onto 6mm x 4mm stainless-steel tubing, allowing hose barbs and NPT pipe fittings (like 1/4” needle valves) to be attached.

I have  both tubings and fittings coming in the mail; more later.

[Mikey98118]

Correction

 

that should have read "8mm O.D. (0.315”) by 6mm I.D. (0.236”) by 250mm (9.842”) long stainless-steel tubing is available through Amazon.com. two tubes are $9.89; this tubing should accommodate both 1/4"-27 thread for MIG contact tips, as well as metric thread for 3D printer nozzles. The tubing’s smaller inside diameter will improve gas flow, and its smaller outside diameter will improve air flow in miniature burners."

[Mikey98118]

MK8 compatible 3D printer nozzles use M6 x 1 thread, and a 5mm drill bit to thread into 5/16” x 3/16” or possibly 8mm x 6mm tubing. I am waiting on the 8mm x 6mm tube to try that out. Plug taps will work well enough if you have a drill press and machine vice, to keep the tap axially aligned with the gas tube. If you are going to tap by hand, take care to use a starting tap.

[Mikey98118]

 

1/4-27 MIG tip thread will tap directly into 5/16” x 3/16” tube. MK8 compatible 3D printer nozzles have M6 x 1 thread, and a 5mm drill bit will allow tapping into 5/16” x 3/16” Tubing. Copper MIG tips are soft and easily bent into axial alignment if your threading job isn’t perfectly aligned, but 3D printer nozzles are hard and very short; the thread they screw into must be perfectly aligned in the gas tube, or the gas jet won’t work properly.

    Plug taps will work well enough if you have a drill press and machine vice, to keep the tap axially aligned with the gas tube. If you are going to tap by hand, take care to use a starting tap, and clamp the gas tube inside a piece of steel angle, and wrap tap around the tap until it lays parallel to the gas tube in the angle, before tapping.

6 minutes ago, Mikey98118 said:

tap

"tap" should be "tape."

[Brijasher]

22 hours ago, Mikey98118 said:

wrap tap around the tap until it lays parallel to the gas tube in the angle, before tapping.

"tap" should be "tape."

Thanks for the clarification. However, I am still trying to understand how this will help the parallelism. Maybe I need more taps?

 

I'll show myself out now.

-Brinton

[Mikey98118]

The inside af steel angle forms a "V" shape. When you clamp  tubing or pipe into it, and then slide something next to that tube or pipe, both parts are axially aligned. But you still need to keep a smaller diameter part or tool centered on the clamped item. You could use shims beneath your tap to do that job, but wrapping some tape around the tap will do well enough; okay?

Anytime you guys are confused by my instructions, speak right up. Chances are that you're not alone. I have been doing these little tricks longer than most of you have been alive. What is clear as day to me may be clear as mud to the rest of you.

[Frosty]

Ditto Mike, I haven't even thought about most of these tricks beyond how to apply it to a particular project. 

Keep up the good work, folk now days need to know this stuff even if they live in a CNC world. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Mikey98118]

 

frosty,

I call them cheap tricks, because, when somebody points them out, following them don't cost much. Otherwise, it's back to the school of hard knocks, which always costs more than it's worth

[Frosty]

I seem to recall old timers telling me, "learn the tricks learn the trade," another version was, "you don't know a trade till you know the tricks." It's like they all went to the same school, tricky old coots.

Dad had sets of certified Starret V alignment blocks for aligning touchy things. I have a couple cases of his Joe blocks too. Unfortunately the track the V blocks fit in didn't get included in the stuff he sent with me. I have the clamps though. Unfortunately they're just neat to look at now. Like I need to align a sewing needle dead center of a 2" round bar. OR off set one within .0001". 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Leather Bill]

1 hour ago, Frosty said:

align a sewing needle dead center of a 2" round bar. OR off set one within .0001". 

I always have trouble with that.  The smallest graduation on my Folding wood ruler is 0.063  

[Mikey98118]

Burner Funnels

Why recommend thin sheet metal funnels for air entrances? The first LPG hobby burners employed bell shaped concentric mild steel (butt-weld) pipe reducer fittings as air scoops on the end of black water pipe mixing tubes; these gave very good flow dynamics and were easy to mount for people who could weld, but they’ve become expensive since the nineties.

    As linear burners gained popularity, threaded bell reducers became prevalent with hobbyists who didn’t weld, and didn’t want to spend much for parts; unfortunately they don’t share the superior flow characteristics of butt-weld reducer fittings; available choices of their in-stock sizes are constantly being reduced, as steel water pipe continues to be marginalized by copper and plastic pipe; worst of all are imported threaded parts with misaligned thread, which end up “as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.”   

    The easiest way to build a linear burner is to employ a stainless steel sausage stuffing tube (SST) as your basic construction unit, and then mechanically affix all the other burner’ parts to it. The extra wide (1/4” to 1/2”) rims at the open ends of SST bell, short. And long funnels are called flanges; these are normally used to help trap the SST effectively on sausage grinding machines. For your purposes, flanges promote easy mounting of the gas assembly.

Canning jar funnels and schedule #10 stainless steel pipe reducers can also be affixed with screws to mixing tubes, but aren’t so easy to fasten a  gas assembly to.

[Frosty]

2 hours ago, Leather Bill said:

I always have trouble with that.  The smallest graduation on my Folding wood ruler is 0.063  

Me too, Dad held insanely tight tolerances, one of the reasons I was so attracted to blacksmithing where the mark one eyeball is often good enough. I was visiting on vacation and we were talking. I'd been doing most of the repair and fabrication on the soil sampling drill rig we used at work. I was telling him how much grief I got from the other drillers for the tolerances I worked to. They kept telling me I was crazy for holding to .1" and grinding corners and edges smooth. The look on his face when I said I held to a tenth and had to clarify with a tenth of an INCH. He literally sputtered, he built his house closer than that. 

I haven't used a mic or set of calipers in years.

I've never had a use for his V blocks, joe blocks or most of the other instrumentation he loaded in the trailer that trip. I haven't turned my lathe on in a few years. I feel bad about that but I haven't had much use for it let along a couple totes full of high end instrumentation. I don't know if it's even worth much anymore.

Frosty The Lucky.

[pnut]

I have to buy a new set of vernier calipers. I can't find my good set. I have a beat up set and a set made from PLASTIC. I bet they're accurate...not

Pnut

[Glenn]

When using steel tape measures, always cut with the same steel tape measure that you measured with.  Yes, there is sometimes that much of a difference between tapes.

Depending on the project and how much accuracy you actually NEED, influences the price of the measuring instrument.

[Frosty]

A couple years ago I bought a plastic digital caliper at a local el'cheap'O tool store for under $10 and it's surprisingly accurate, more than close enough for what I needed at the time and I didn't have to worry about the rain or rough handling. 

I'd hardly call it a precision instrument but it was a good bang for the buck.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Another FrankenBurner]

Same story here.  Harbor freight black digital set, less than $10.  They are metal though.

Within a thousandth of the dial Staretts.

I own a few sets for doing things I wouldn't think of doing with the others.

[Mikey98118]

Most things have legitimate uses; plastic calipers are light and of no interest to thieves, making them quite handy to take along during visits to junk yards, etc. Alas, I must travel all the way to Tacoma to find a junk yard thees days; urban renewal sucks eggs.

 

and taking to places you wouldn't take better tools to?