Tire-Making, not nearly finished but...
 

....I have managed to get the casing machine to make useful fabric.

:)

Pics here-
http://www.norcom2000.com/users/dcim...ng/test04.html

http://tinyurl.com/3mrkzj8

Image #1 shows the first (A) second (B) and third (C) attempts. All
casings are shown with their bare (thread) sides towards the camera.

(A) was the first attempt on 1 November 2010, but was totally
unacceptable. The laying mechanism was friction-driven and would slip on
any imperfection.

(B) was made 30 July 2011, after numerous improvements to the machinery,
but there were still some problems lurking. Also it changes in
consistency halfway through, as I stopped the machine to mess with some
adjustments. It is greatly better than (A), but is still coarse. In the
bottom (better) half of piece (B), there was a periodic error that
caused the threads to be laid 3 next to each other, and then 1 spaced
apart. The 33-tex threads are spaced at 40 TPI (my original goal) but
are not spaced evenly.

The latest (C) attempt was made today, after a few changes & adjustments
and much improved over (B). It appears to have less threads than (B) but
it does not; both have 40 TPI. I was going to take a full-length photo,
but realized that there's not any reason to. It looks the same all the
way along its length; there are no "bad spots" to even look at.


Image #2 is a close-up of the middle areas of (B) and (C), to better
show the differences.


I feel that the casing machine is basically done, in that it is entirely
acceptable for use and I don't believe that any further improvements can
be made without spending a much-larger amount of money and time on it.
The variation in thread spacing is less than 1/40th of an inch, over a
piece of fabric that is 10 inches wide and 70 inches long.

It did take a long time, but then I figured this would be the most
difficult machine of the three to get working correctly.


------------

Next up: a tire-building machine (where the casing, beads and tread area
are combined). ...Kinda-sorta like the real professional industrial
ones, except not automatic and not costing $25,000.

{-And hopefully not taking so long to complete, either. :P }

That's certainly good enough, Swallow, now Schwalbe were selling tyres with casings as in B only 20 years ago. Come to think, they were white-wall tyres, although of a racing style.