Re: How are piston rings made?

Posted by Vern-MI on January 30, 2004 at 15:46:04 from (66.2.149.210):

In Reply to: How are piston rings made? posted by Curious on January 30, 2004 at 09:34:24:

A loooong time ago I worked at Muskegon Piston Ring. That does not by any means make me an expert.

As I recall the rings were made of gray cast iron in the shape of a flat continuous ring. These rings were then run through a Blanchard grinder to grind the sides of the ring flat, parallel, and smooth. The ring was then put in a "Cam Turn" jig and outside of the ring was machined into the shape of a piston ring in its unassembled state, or in other words cam shaped not round. The rings were then placed in a fixture and a slot was cut opposite the high point of the cam to form the ring opening.

The rings were then compressed and placed in yet a fixture which was the size of the finished bore for which the rings were being made. The rings were clamped between its top and bottom surfaces and the inside diameter was then bored to its finished size.

Cast iron oil rings were compressed, clamp on a spindle and that spindle was placed on an indexing head. The head would index the stacked oil rings and a set of milling cutters would cut the oil grooves in the ring indexing between cuts to the next oil groove location.

All Ford rings had to be subjected to an addition step called "Pot Lapping" where the ring was placed in a pot the diameter of the cylinder for which it was being built. The assembly was bathed in lapping compound and the ring was cycled up and down in the bore the to make it perfectly fit the correct bore size.

Cast iron rings with locking ends were finished in the same manner as ther other rings however the final step was to have female machine operators run each end of each ring through a milling operation to cut first one locking tab on one end and then flip the ring over to cut the mating tab on the opposite ring end.

This is an over view of something I did 43 years ago so much has changed in that amount of time. I don't believe Muskegon Piston Ring is still in business.

Follow Ups:

• Re: Re: How are piston rings made? Glenn in MI 07:11:36 01/31/04 (0)

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