COPPERY, SHINY & CURVY……
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ELECTRO-FORMING (also known in the trade as “Electro-Deposition”) is that arcane industrial process by which those shiny, sensuous curved copper cylinder/head jacket-covers are formed integrally attached to their corresponding cylinder-liners/combustion-chambers of automobile and not least, water-cooled aero-engines using only electricity and chemical solutions. The process secrets were tightly held and guarded by those wizardly practitioners who turned out spectacular pieces of workmanship, unassailable in their detailed intricacy and certainly, could never have been economically fabricated by relying on old-fashioned ‘black-smithing’ techniques using rolled sheet copper. These wonderful creations appeared right from the beginning of the 1900’s and not even mass-production press-tooling and jigs would have come close to achieving this level of precision industrial artform.
I’m well acquainted with all the general principles but these are only a thin veneer of the deeper intricacies as practised by the individual craftsmen and their specialist fabriaction shops. i would like to discover their ‘secret’ recipe ccokbooks, their special in-process techniques; temperatures, timings, pH levels, voltages, currents, etc, etc…..
Does anyone have any of this information, perhaps from old period journals, specialist university texts, etc, etc……
All answers, please……..This may help.The photo shows a page from Automobile Engineer Vol 1, available for download from archive.org.
Hi Maurice,
“BRILLIANT” (excuse the pun!). You have no idea how ‘on the money’ your posted scan is. The ENV was the very engine that lead to my original post. A ½-scale running model of this engine is being completed by a U.K. based friend of mine using the very technique described. He encountered huge difficulties with the ElectroForming of the Copper water-jackets but he got there in the end. As he states it; “when I first commenced the fabrication of the ENV’s Copper water-jackets, I knew about 1% of what I needed to know. Now that I have completed the task I can confidently state that I now know all of 5%!” ……. I will forward on a copy to him.
What also got me enthused about your reply Maurice is that you obviously have access to the “AUTOMOBILE ENGINEER. I am trying to get hold of some scans of pages 170-175 in the June, 1925 Volume 15 (Issue #203). It is an article fully describing Edmund Rumpler’s 28-cylinder 1,000PS aero-engine, in reference to an earlier posting of mine. Is there any possibility that you may have access to this article and whether you would be good enough to scan a copy for me? I would be most appreciative of your help.
Cheers Maurice.
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