Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

PM Research Unmachined Pipe Fittings

I always buy the casting trees from PMR of their unmachined pipe fittings in their different sizes as
it works out a lot cheaper for me than buying their pre machined ones.
There's a LOT of work in machining just one, they must have some pretty good jigs at the factory where they
can quickly turn out many many of these in bulk numbers.

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Sometimes I've just drilled them for brazing in copper pipe, looks quite nice the copper and brass together.

I am just glad that PMR sells already machined fixings to allow folks that don’t have a lathe or room for one, the ability to make things. 

In the near future I might look into learning some basic machining skills so I can do just bare bones stuff, but full blown machining is skill learned over years and years and years.

I have usually bought the casting trees myself in the past. The problems I see with a jig is that the individual pieces aren't completely uniform,  thus requiring individual shaping to fit a jig. They are a pita to do & I usually ruin a few from each batch. I usually do most of one type part at a time( & I hate doing them).ai think tubal cain (Mr. Pete) did a video on machining these that I adhered to pretty well.