Tender Bed
The tender bed casting had been machined in Las Vegas by Bruno Platzer, from there all the parts that basically hang off the tender needed to be made and fitted prior to painting. The bed is a superb one piece aluminum casting supplied by Jim Kreider.
Tender Bed
So first job was to make the brackets for the tool box and re-railing frogs. As bending material is not my strong suite i decided to CNC out all the pieces .
I then drilled holes into the plate to allow me to saw into them and separate out the various parts
Face to width
Each leg was then held in the mill vice and faced off to the correct thickness and the edges were de burred
Drilling holes
Using a variety of clamping methods the various holes were drilled for the rivets and bolts
Riveting jig
Each of the brackets fitted on to the bed with a casting , the castings were first riveted onto the legs then a jig was made to hold the legs at the right spacing. Then the basket legs were marked out and drilled through for a 1/16th rivet into the legs.
Brackets
The two re-railer carriers and the tool box carrier ready to bolt to the bed to the bed. Next job was to make u the pipe clamps for the air pipes. These are available as a casting but i decided they would give me a good opportunity to try out tome 3D surface milling on the Tormach The clamps came in two variety's, 2 pipe and single pipe.
Basic shape milled
Using a 5mm ball mill to machine the contour, step down was 0.001"
Resulting finish
Facing blocks to size
Jig for cross drilling the tube clamp holes
Completed 2 tube clamps
Similar set up to produce the single pipe clamps
Next job was to tackle the coupler, the original design called for a set of draft gear from a secondary supplier who is no longer in production. So the mounting of the coupler needed to be modified to a single shank pin. As the support from the original design keeping the coupler central in the pocket was no longer there I needed to add a block to give a better way to locate the coupler shank vertically. This also meant that the top cover also needed additional material on it to reduce the vertical movement.
What I also found was the spring block in the coupler was easily misaligned so I made a new block to help in keeping the spring and block from twisting out.
Turning up the boss on the new spring block
Cross drilling the new spring block
The new spring block with bosses inside the coil spring with the old plain end one to the left on the shank
Bottom spacer block
Bottom spacer block and top block with additional material left on the inside to centralise the coupler shank Once the bottom space block was fitted to the bed the top plate was temporarily fitted so a 3/8" cross hole could be drilled for the shank locating pin..