Post by alanetm on Nov 13, 2012 19:59:45 GMT
Looking at the ashpan and seeing the sliding floor solution to the door fouling the brake gear caused me to look for another solution, namely because the grate arrangement and sliding door seems to be fraught with problems of jamming through ash debris and trying to open the sliding floor from underneath if not over a pit (ground level) or on a steaming bay seems equally fraught with difficulty.
At the moment I am toying with a simple grate of one piece hinged as drawn. This means with the grate down it will rest on the brake cross beam. The means of raising the grate back up is a simple cam operation i.e a bar at the end of roatating arms (one each side of the ashpan inside) that also holds the grate raised as it finishes "over centre"when "up" and thus cannot let the grate fall. That means one mucky hinge in the ashpan ie bushes in the ashpan wall for bearings to take the rotating arms spindle.
To empty the ashpan I plan two doors one hinged at the rear and the second hinged near midway along the bottom (the exact location is on a line following the underside of the grate when lowered). The front door hinges down between the brake gear giving an opening at the front and the rear door also hinges down between the brake gear giving a larger opening at the rear. Both doors are held "up" by simple pull pins that allow the doors to "drop" when pulled out. They are accessible from the left side (looking forward) between the driving wheels
The doors are of course not the full width of the ash pan (the front one is wide enough for the grate to drop through) but the ledge at the side of the doors is quite narrow and this will not be difficult to brush out if need be. The door hinges being outside the ashpan like the draught doors will be "loose fit" on the pins as no doubt it will be mucky under the ashpan as time goes by.
So the postulated design allows for a simple grate (sorry to those that want a prototypical one) and drop down doors for easy fire dropping if needed.
Watch this space as they say.
At the moment I am toying with a simple grate of one piece hinged as drawn. This means with the grate down it will rest on the brake cross beam. The means of raising the grate back up is a simple cam operation i.e a bar at the end of roatating arms (one each side of the ashpan inside) that also holds the grate raised as it finishes "over centre"when "up" and thus cannot let the grate fall. That means one mucky hinge in the ashpan ie bushes in the ashpan wall for bearings to take the rotating arms spindle.
To empty the ashpan I plan two doors one hinged at the rear and the second hinged near midway along the bottom (the exact location is on a line following the underside of the grate when lowered). The front door hinges down between the brake gear giving an opening at the front and the rear door also hinges down between the brake gear giving a larger opening at the rear. Both doors are held "up" by simple pull pins that allow the doors to "drop" when pulled out. They are accessible from the left side (looking forward) between the driving wheels
The doors are of course not the full width of the ash pan (the front one is wide enough for the grate to drop through) but the ledge at the side of the doors is quite narrow and this will not be difficult to brush out if need be. The door hinges being outside the ashpan like the draught doors will be "loose fit" on the pins as no doubt it will be mucky under the ashpan as time goes by.
So the postulated design allows for a simple grate (sorry to those that want a prototypical one) and drop down doors for easy fire dropping if needed.
Watch this space as they say.
