The New MQ

A while ago, Mike and I decided to put the mQ-Valve back into production. Here's the progress on our first run of 100 units.

8/10/07- After we received all of the tools and materials, I finally made some chips today. I'm running the cocking rod spacer, which is the easiest part.

A pile of bars which will soon be mQ-Valves

The first part in our run, fresh off the lathe

8/13/07- The cocking rod spacers are done. There are still some bugs that need to be worked out in the valve body code, but I was able to make a few of them successfully. I think this is the most difficult of all the parts, so things should get easier once they're done.

The completed run of cocking rod spacers

Unfinished valve bodies

8/17/07- The bugs are worked out, so I'm running the valve bodies as fast as I can. I found that circular interpolating the cross hole with an endmill leaves less burrs than drilling.  We need to do some testing to determine if there is any advantage to putting a chamfer on the front of the valve body.

Milling the cross hole with my CNC knee mill

8/18/07- Valve bodies are done. I also ran some 11/16" bodies for Trilogy, Black Magic, and AKA. These are pretty much identical to my original universal 11/16" bodies except for the new valve design.

Completed run of standard valve bodies

Universal 11/16" valve bodies

8/27/07- The urethane seals are cut and installed on the solenoids. After that, we have to measure the distance between the seal and front face of the solenoid, then separate them into four .004" wide bins. I've been working on getting code written to make the pilot housings themselves. This actually proved quite difficult, as I had to make several revisions to the tooling and toolpaths after inspecting the sealing faces under a microscope. I'm proud to say I was able to remove all burrs as well as hold good concentricity. Next up is production of the pilot housings and back caps.

Measuring a solenoid with a dial indicator and a parallel clamped to the vise

100 sorted solenoids with attached urethane seals

9/1/07- Progress continues with the pilot housings. This actually ended up being a lot more difficult than expected. I had to do a lot of tweaking to get a good valve seat, and then some testing to verify proper function. I'm hoping to finish up all the aluminum parts over the long weekend, leaving the poppets as the last component that needs to be machined.

Milling slots for the solenoid wires

A complete pilot housing

Some of the more important things you should should notice about the new pilot housings is that the back end is threaded for a cap that will cover the solenoid, and the solenoid wire slot edges are now beveled. The two bands on the body next to the threads indicate this housing is dimensioned for bin 2 solenoids.

9/3/07- All of the aluminum components are finished, and will be sent out for anodize tomorrow. Notice that the solenoid is fully enclosed inside the new pilot housing, hopefully greatly reducing crushed solenoids and sheared wires. I'll add heat shrink to the wires during the assembly process.

Pilot assembly

Completed run of pilot housings

Completed run of solenoid caps

Karnivore spacers

Note that the Karnivore spacers are now aluminum. This is for three reasons: aluminum is cheaper and easier to recycle than delrin, and I would prefer not to inventory a third type of 3/4" bar.

9/13/07- The aluminum parts are back from anodize. I assembled a few pilots for testing purposes, and I'm pleased to say everything worked as intended. I'll start making the poppets after I test if cutting a slot on the back improves performance.

Finished run of aluminum parts

Results from the pilot assembly trial

9/17/07- Done! It appears that cutting a slot in the back of the poppet does not help anything. Valves should be for sale on www.mqvalve.com shortly.

Assembled poppets

Fully assembled and tested valves