HarleyTechTalk

I can't for the life of me figure out how to embed a video here anymore, so forgive me for providing a link instead:

https://youtu.be/9E9noJwjAD4

The way I used to do it doesn't seem to work anymore.

In any event, big day here at HAMMER PERFORMANCE. It took us a week, but we finally got the brand spanky new H85AX honing machine working and the cylinders are all coming out GREAT.

We shipped over 950 engine kits last year, and honing all those cylinders by hand was just getting to be too time consuming.

This baby can hone SIX cylinders unattended! Every one of them comes out perfect, as the machine automatically measures the size and adjusts tension and location to make sure the cylinder comes out straight and round. It also automatically does the plateau hone step.

The diamond honing stones cost thousands per set. But fortunately, a set lasts about 180,000 cylinders, or so they tell us.

Now the bottleneck has moved to gapping rings and preassembling kits. HAMMER Dan had to order a second ring gapping machine.



We have a bunch of automation now. We have a 3-axis vertical CNC machine, a pair of 4-axis vertical CNC machines, a 5-axis vertical CNC machine (for porting), and now this 6-hole automatic honing machine.

The place is no longer two old washed up racers playing in their sandbox, it's become a freakin' factory. But automation ensures we can keep up with demand while at the same time making a quality, consistent product. Our sales have grown dramatically and this is what it takes.

It still takes people, though. We're at nine employees at the moment. You can see all our ugly mugs here: http://www.hammerperf.com/hpcrew.shtml . Without all these machines, there's no way in Hades we could do it with nine people.

We've also outgrown our 7500 square foot shop that we just bought 7 years ago. We're busting at the seams!

 
looks like a good crew
I like Phil's T shirt

Nice choice, enjoy

Quote from: aswracing on February 10, 2021, 05:30:06 PM
I can't for the life of me figure out how to embed a video here anymore, so forgive me for providing a link instead:

https://youtu.be/9E9noJwjAD4

The way I used to do it doesn't seem to work anymore.

In any event, big day here at HAMMER PERFORMANCE. It took us a week, but we finally got the brand spanky new H85AX honing machine working and the cylinders are all coming out GREAT.

We shipped over 950 engine kits last year, and honing all those cylinders by hand was just getting to be too time consuming.

This baby can hone SIX cylinders unattended! Every one of them comes out perfect, as the machine automatically measures the size and adjusts tension and location to make sure the cylinder comes out straight and round. It also automatically does the plateau hone step.

The diamond honing stones cost thousands per set. But fortunately, a set lasts about 180,000 cylinders, or so they tell us.

Now the bottleneck has moved to gapping rings and preassembling kits. HAMMER Dan had to order a second ring gapping machine.



We have a bunch of automation now. We have a 3-axis vertical CNC machine, a pair of 4-axis vertical CNC machines, a 5-axis vertical CNC machine (for porting), and now this 6-hole automatic honing machine.

The place is no longer two old washed up racers playing in their sandbox, it's become a freakin' factory. But automation ensures we can keep up with demand while at the same time making a quality, consistent product. Our sales have grown dramatically and this is what it takes.

It still takes people, though. We're at nine employees at the moment. You can see all our ugly mugs here: http://www.hammerperf.com/hpcrew.shtml . Without all these machines, there's no way in Hades we could do it with nine people.

We've also outgrown our 7500 square foot shop that we just bought 7 years ago. We're busting at the seams!

Very impressive!       

Nice to know you're moving serious kit quantities!

Any idea when the big bore kit 88" and 90" Axtell cylinder availability issues will be resolved or if they'll be resolved? Is Axtell having hard times?

My bro wants to build his Sporty into a beast but if those jugs are not realistically going to be available this year then I need to let him know so he can pursue something different.

Might it be worth it to produce bigger bore jugs in-house too or sub out your own designs? As older companies change or disappear reliance on them could be problematic. Foundry costs would probably be prohibitive (they severely impeded Solenberg's Delkron revival but their parts like FXR inner primarys pretty much require casting) but billet might be reasonable since it's cheap enough to make car wheels out of and wheel-size billet is far more expensive.

Billet would be far cheaper to prototype and upgrade designs, and a turning center could be used for much more than jugs.

Quote from: farmall on February 11, 2021, 10:43:50 AM
Nice to know you're moving serious kit quantities!

Any idea when the big bore kit 88" and 90" Axtell cylinder availability issues will be resolved or if they'll be resolved? Is Axtell having hard times?

My bro wants to build his Sporty into a beast but if those jugs are not realistically going to be available this year then I need to let him know so he can pursue something different.

Might it be worth it to produce bigger bore jugs in-house too or sub out your own designs? As older companies change or disappear reliance on them could be problematic. Foundry costs would probably be prohibitive (they severely impeded Solenberg's Delkron revival but their parts like FXR inner primarys pretty much require casting) but billet might be reasonable since it's cheap enough to make car wheels out of and wheel-size billet is far more expensive.

Billet would be far cheaper to prototype and upgrade designs, and a turning center could be used for much more than jugs.

Ron made the choice to not do any more production runs on his cast iron cylinders. I had a long talk with him about it, practically begged him to do one more run, even made a commitment to buy a sizable number of them up front. He has his reasons, but it's not really my place to talk about those reasons publicly.

Ron is someone I think the world of, he mentored me in many ways and helped in my racing endeavors for several years. He's basically a legend in this business. One of the smartest people I've ever known ... and considering I had a 32 year engineering career and was surrounded by many smart people, that's no small compliment. I could always call him up when needed and describe some strange thing I was seeing or wondering and he'd take the time to explain it to me. And he would never just give me the answer. He'd always explain all around the issue and make me figure it out. That's a good teaching technique.

Anyway, since there was no way to get cylinders from him, and we had customers constantly asking for the things, we opened the wallet and paid the mold fees and prototype fees, and we're currently testing. If all goes well, we anticipate having production pieces by Fall.

We're doing the 90ci (3.875 bore) only, and at the stock 4.650 height only. The other stuff is just too low volume. By focusing on one product, we can streamline processes. Like I said, we're a factory anymore. As volumes go up, we have less and less bandwidth for the odd custom stuff.

We made our first customer delivery of a pair of these prototype cylinders just a few days ago, and he posted up some pictures on another board:



Our cylinder on the left, the Axtell on the right. You can see that we went with the standard big fin design as found on 2004+ Sportsters. A cast iron cylinder needs all the cooling help it can get. The alloy is 100-70-03 ductile (the good stuff).

This motor has been in the 135-140hp range, on the Axtells. So we've got a baseline. This particular guy is a good customer, and he beats the holy hell out of his bike at the drag strip, so he's a good candidate to help us test. His Axtells were still very serviceable, but we talked him into helping us test our new product.

A few more pics he provided:



We like to thermal coat pistons when destined for cast iron cylinders. The more heat you can keep out of the skirts, the less they swell up, and that's a big deal when you've got cast iron cylidners. We've also been doing the abraidable clearance control coating on them. Cast iron cylinders just love to scuff pistons, if you give them half a chance. The tune window is pretty narrow as well.



The customer did that clearance cut for the exhaust. He was in a hurry and wanted them before we had developed the toolpaths to do it, said he'd do it himself manually. These castings non-specific to front or rear, and we machine them to the application. Notice the branding, it's part of the casting.



He also whacked the fins on the intake side, not sure what carb he's planning to run but apparently he needs the clearance.

I seen that machine in action at the PRI show. 
Do you have their machine for boring cylinders too?

Quote from: wfolarry on February 21, 2021, 04:54:46 AM
I seen that machine in action at the PRI show. 
Do you have their machine for boring cylinders too?

Back in the olden days, I had a little boring bar, I can't even remember what brand. Probably Serviquip or Winona Van Norman (which later became the same company). Damn thing was slow, especially when you had to do lots of small steps to get from an 883 to 1200. But even doing an 88 to 95 inch Twinkie was a long slow painful process.

Then in early 2003, we got our first vertical CNC machine. Boring cylinders is one of the first things we taught it to do. What a difference. Watch this video to see us bore an 883 cylinder to 1200, fully a half inch more bore, in a single pass: https://youtu.be/lFm1Y-Oo52c . If you're patient enough to watch to the end, you'll see it makes a mountain of cast iron chips. It's a good process, it comes out really straight and round. I think the coolant has a lot to do with that, by keeping it thermally stable through the process.

It massively increased throughput. I still remember my record, I bored 24 cylinders in a single day once.

We don't bore all that many cylinders any more. Maybe 4-5 sets a month on average. Our main product - bolt-on 1250 and 1275 kits for Sportsters - use a special construction cylinder of our design. The stock cylinders like to crack their spigots if you take them out that large. We hardly ever do 883-1200's anymore. Almost all we bore these days is Twinkies, from 3.750 or 3.875 to 3.937. Doing so few, there's no way we could justify a dedicated boring machine.

But what few cylinders we still bore, we still do them in the CNC machine as shown in that video, albeit with a newer fixture that works better.

I spoke with Dwyane earlier today. I'm sending a couple S&S cylinders and CP pistons out on Monday to be sized.

Dwayne was really helpful, and took time to talk to me about what I wanted, and what he suggests.     

950 engine kits in on year! 

Impressive!!!!! 
I had no idea there was that type of demand.

Congrats

Good read . Great shop

They also do great work with that H85AX Rottler honing machine. Below is how my 124" (4.125" bore) cylinders came back. Target clearance was 0.0030" to 0.0035". They came back as 0.0032" and 0.0031" average clearance and will work great, and a very straight bore.

I found my cylinder shop. 

Yeah, that machine is amazing! It was expensive and it took a bit to get all the fixturing and tooling and everything set up, but the result is worth it. Particularly when you ship as many cylinders as HAMMMER Dan does.

I did this screen capture of a security camera at the shop this morning:



When we moved into this building in 2014, it seemed so big, like we would never run out of room. And yet here we are busting at the seams again.

You can really see HAMMER Dan's dedication to automating things. He's got a 3-Axis CNC machine, a pair of 4-Axis CNC machines, a 5-Axis CNC machine, and of course the computerized automatic honing machine. Machines let you get things done faster, better, and in less floor space with fewer people. He's got far more automation than most businesses of this size.

This is just the shop of course, which takes up roughly two-thirds of the building. He also has a large shipping area, an inventory area, three offices, and even an on-site apartment upstairs.

It's all his now, the papers are all signed and sealed and I'm officially retired. HAMMER Dan is about ten years younger than me, so he'll be at it for awhile. I have no doubt he'll continued to do well.

Congratulations on your retirement Aaron. That's not always an easy decision as to when to do it.

I think automating is a great way to be able to handle more complex work with less processing time. I also imagine it's harder to find guys that want to work in a mechanical / machining field. I know before I retired two years ago, it took me almost three years to find one person capable of running the machinery we had, and that wanted third shift.

Great set up. Big dollar shop. Thanks for sharing 

Very Nice Shop.  Congratulations on Your Retirement and Best of Luck in the Future!

Quote from: Ohio HD on January 02, 2024, 11:02:38 AMCongratulations on your retirement Aaron. That's not always an easy decision as to when to do it.

I think automating is a great way to be able to handle more complex work with less processing time. I also imagine it's harder to find guys that want to work in a mechanical / machining field. I know before I retired two years ago, it took me almost three years to find one person capable of running the machinery we had, and that wanted third shift.

That's everywhere it seems. The amount of candidates we see have no real technical experience. Even if a operator comes from one shop to ours the machines are different. It is easier to teach someone who knows what a machine is capable of and should do but just how to tell it vs a total newbie. The younger generation just don't want to work it seems also. I'm a maintenance Specialist but cut my teeth on Lasers. Punches, brakes, mills and lathe's. I "Specialize" in the shop because I've ran every machine. If I know how it works I can fix it. Guys now days cry about having to go from one machine to another and fail to see that it's another tool in thier toolbox. The more things you can do the more of an asset you are. Different generation, different world.