11AC Spinner and Nose Bowl Ring

[seaheli]

Made very good progress this afternoon with new tooling, spun the spinner dome from the material Aeronca specified 3003-0.

[seaheli]

Match drilling fastner location in bulkhead and spinner dome!

[seaheli]

Drilling nut-plate fastner hole location!

[Carl Prather]

Charles,
They look great. When can I buy?

Carl Prather

[seaheli]

After 12 days straight at the R&D shop, I'll get to relax this afternoon in the shop. This picture shows the trim tooling for the propeller cut-outs. Bob Carr taught me this process of trimming, he designed this tool and it works with accuracy and simplicity!

[seaheli]

The trimmed spinner dome, stainless screws and fiber washers!

I hope everyone has enjoyed seeing the process, thank you for your patience!!!

[seaheli]

[seaheli]

I have researched the issues with the cracking of the spinner dome's. The alloy's 3003 and 6061 fail in the same locations! The cracks are not visible after the spinning process because of the smearing of the metal. Eddy current inspection will depict the cracks after spinning. After years of use on the aircraft the cracks propagate to the outer surface of the dome.

[Paul Agaliotis]

Charles,
Why not make them from a different alloy? Many planes use spinners and other manufacturers might have had better luck.
Paul

[seaheli]

Paul,

I plan to spin the spinner domes from the industry standard. All other manufactures from that era used 1100. I cannot figure out why Aeronca chose 3003, other than using a smaller gauge of material (weight)! The 65CA used 1100 for the dome and 3003 for the bulkhead. I know why 6061 was chosen in the later years.

Also, after receiving several domes with cracks, I wanted to fully understand what was causing the cracks.

Charles

[Paul Agaliotis]

Charles,
If the 3003 was "0" condition it has to be the Manganese. I'll bet Aeronca had the spinners done by an industrial supplier that already used this alloy for another product. Costs were watched pretty close back then.
Paul

[seaheli]

I have tried my best to provide a quality spinner assembly. Invested monetarily into research, process and tooling.

Found the root cause for the cracks of the dome and bulkhead. Worked with a metallurgist for improved materials.

I have never required payment for the assemblies until you received it and pleased with the item.

This project has taken longer than expected, I have conveyed to everyone of my working schedule!

Made a decision in the beginning of this project, "if anyone has a bad experience with me or the spinner assembly", I will stop providing the spinning service of the 11AC spinner assemblies!

"Someone has had a bad business experience with me and the spinner assembly!" I no longer will provide 11AC spinners.

Charles Finch

[Champ99b]

Charles

I hate to hear that after all of your work you will no longer make the spinners. I don't need one but I am sure that others on this site or future owners will.

I do understand how you feel.

Good luck in other projects

Ron Clark

[joea]

Charles,

Sure hope that you can stand down for a bit and reconsider your decision. As bad as it seems, these days it appears to be impossible to please everyone and just because you had a less than perfect experience with one or two people is not a reason to deprive the rest of the community of your excellent service and parts.

For instance I just had a email from one forum member telling me that he could not log into the forum. Am guessing that he had entered an incorrect password as everyone else, almost 1400 of us, are having no problems in this area. He then goes on to ask me in a somewhat difficult way "Why does it have to be do difficult? I wish we didnt need passwords for fun stuff."

I had to take 20 minutes of my time to email them back and explain how this forum gets around 1500-2000 people who are spammers every week that I have to go into the forum and delete. I just deleted over 100 of them this morning alone. If there were no passwords on this bulletin board every one of these spammers would be posting on every thread. Their posts would be nothing about Aeronca's but all the viagara and cialis you ever wanted, to the point where it would clog the forum making it worthless for all of us.

In the end we try to make everyone happy, but if thats not possible then whats important for me is to do the best that you can do. From where I stand you are doing better work and producing a far better product than we have had since Aeronca was making airplanes, and possibly forever, so really hope that you do reconsider.

Joe A

[Champ99b]

AMEN to Joe's post

ron