1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Hi folks,

after the invitation to this forum i wanna introduce my actual build. I started in August 2011 with the first planings and I hope to finish the model in the upcoming year.

This Liebherr Excavator is normally used in mining and road construction and has a operation weight (backhoe attachment) of 120 metric tons. While I do the R984 my Buddy works on his R9100, whitch is a little smaller (well, not really). While he´s doing the milling parts I do most of the planing, lathe work and sheet metal welding. Sometimes I´ll throw in a picture from the R9100, but till now there are just a few. OK, enough, let´s start with the hardware!

Those parts are laser cut steel and 2mm to 5mm thick.

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

And some more

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Hi Kevin,

thanks for your comment!

About TIG welding, this is certainly not my job or occupation and not every bead is nice, so I had to learn and practice. For me it was very helpful watch Jodie from weldingtipsandtricks. Most of his videos is about TIG welding, but he shows MIG and Stick, also. The 1st I learned was to change the Tungsten into a new grinded, sharp one once if it got stuck.
Most parts here I welded without filler rod, just heated up and melted the corners together.

Here some more pictures from the under carriage.

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

...and some more. If there are any question feel free to ask!

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Welcome Markus. That's a great start to what will be a big beast when finished.

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Well, it is the best if you practice again and again. Today I welded a couple hours using grey tungsten and after a while I tested the gold ones. But those didn't work as well as the grey ones, I got stuck very often with the same settings on the welder. Because of this I switched back to the gray tungsten. Pictures from this welding will be posted later.
First some pictures from the 2-stage Planetary gear inside the drive wheel. Gear ratio is 20.36 : 1.

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Some more from the drive train. The gearbox is shimed with thin brass sheets for proper chain setup. The motors are brushless outrunner with 120 Watt and 760kv.

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Great job on the final drives! Keep the pictures coming.
Cheer's, Neil.

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

very nice

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Hi did you cut all the internal and external gears in you drive? If you did you did a very nice job. Ed

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Hi Ed,

just the internal gears are laser cut. In every drive is a stack of 10 sandpaper-cleaned pieces with a complete height of 20mm. Using thicker material is less/ poor quality. The internal gears were bought online. Sorry for the blurry picture, it shows one of the int. gears. The small brass gear was just for checking.

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Hello so you laser cut the internal gears, I was thinking you cut then your self and was wondering how you did it. Your way is a lot easer than broaching them and also buying the other gears saves a lot of time but you still did a nice job. Ed

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Ed, stay tuned! I'll come up with the turntable next. It has an internal gear, also, but bigger teeth and wasn't lasercut ;)

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

OK I sure will be looking forward to that. Ed

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Hi folks,

here now the (original built) turntable. It has an internal gear with 107 teeth, modul 2. This gear are two parts, every one got a radius on the edge for the 5,5mm steel balls. The gear is bolted to the gear carrier with 48 screws.
Then there are two outer rings with a radius for the balls, also. They are filled with 135 balls and then evenly closed with 3 screws. The upper body of the excavator will be bolted with 45 screws to the turntable.
The internal gear was done by my buddy Michael on his cnc-mill with a 0.4mm endmill. The screws were made by myself, 96 pcs for this turntable and 288 for the Michaels turntable for the R9100.

As I mounted the stuff together I found out, that the turntable need much power for turning, so I had to improve. With a sharpie I colored the ball groove and used a 5.5mm Drill shaping the groove with the drill flange, about 3 or 4 times. Now it runs smooth and without any play.

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

here are some selfmade screw-pics:

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Nice work on the screws but cutting the internal gear on a cnc mill that took some planning and skill with the CAD. Ed

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Ed, the CAD-work wasn't sooo hard. I used CATIA V with a plugin for gears. So I had only had to type in some numbers and voila... a single file came out with over 30 MB :jaw:

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

welcome Markus :) great job on the model so far :cool: Your slew assembly is exactly the way I am making them on my cat385s . I have my internal drawn and programed for the cnc mill comes to about 2 hrs cutting time .Just to find time to cut them :( . How long did it take to cut yours out ?

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

I don't know exactly because my buddy is/ was doing the milling work. I think, the mill was running about 3-4 hours. We used pre-lasered parts for this. Here some more pictures from the fabrication.

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Hi Markus are you sure you used a 0.4 end mill to cut your ring gear that is like a hair diameter? If I am not mistaken that is steel you cut how many end mill did you break? 0.4 is .0155 inches are you sure you got that figure right? If it is right that was some fine work a great job. Ed

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Ed , quite plausible with right feeds and speeds to depth of cut hence the long run times . Also , rigidity of machine is a big + , the lil grizzly's will not handle that size without breaking them . I have run .01" already . another thing , tool run out will kill em in these sizes .

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Hi Ed, you're right! I asked Michael, who milled the stuff and he used an endmill with 0.4mm radius to match the contour. So it was a 0.8mm mill. Sorry for this and thank you for your attention.

Markus

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

The intricate machining involved is beyond my scope of imagination. :eek:

Do you use any lube on the balls?

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Joe, of course I added some grease to the balls before final mounting. A grease nipple on a hidden place would be perfect for maintenance...

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Hi Kevin, sure it´s insane! Before I started this model i planed it in 1/8 scale. Then I met Michael, he was a 1/12 guy. We came together in the middle and choosed 1/10 for our excavators and upcoming models. Well, in 1/10 scale i think the R984 will reach the 120 Kg.
This project is running since September 2011 and there are a lot of things finished, whitch I'll post shortly, so watch out for the counterweight, some reilings, the hydraulic cylinder, boom, stick(s, the R9100 is a little different), hydraulic quick coupler, bucket and of course the chains.

I saw your pics and videos on youtube with your excavator, a 984c, also ;-)

greets Markus

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Hi Markus you said you used a laser to cut parts did you use a laser to cut the rough gear teeth and then finished them off with the mill or did you cut the hole gear with a mill? It was some excellent work. Ed

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Ed, I gave Michael the cadfiles and he odered the lasercut steel rings. See attached some pictures, whitch shows the lasercut rings, turning the 5.5mm round groove into the internal gear on the lathe and milling the slew ring carriers out of a 30mm steel plate.

Kevin, you've to wait for motion pictures :jump:

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Good morning,

here the first pictures from the cylinder fabrication. I made them for the R984 and R9100. They are made of brass tubes and chromed piston rods. Gaskets are industrial hydraulic standart. Here you see the hoist cylinders of the R984. They have a bore of 24mm and a stroke of 200mm.

More pictures later today!

cheers!

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Hello Markus well this is some more very nice work. I see you soldered every thing together. I my self would have preferred threading the barrels but it your parts so who am I to tell you how to do it's only a suggestion. You are moving right along you will be moving dirt very soon. Ed

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Thank you, Ed. No problem with any suggestion or different fabrication methods, this could bring some new ideas for following stuff. So they are very welcome! But in this case I want to do it scale and the cylinder can be opened by removing the (again selfmade) hex-bolts M3 from the head.

This pictures shows the rod at the piston end. It has a diameter of 16mm and received a M10 thread and a groove for the gasket. The piston was finished directly mounted on the rod for 100% center fit. After all I think the loctite on the thread should be enough to seal the rod and piston, but the o-ring can't be bad, either.
The bottom parts of the cylinder were silver soldered, because there wasn't a area big enough for soft soldering. To avoid desoldering of the cylinderheads i put them upside down in a small bucket of water.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ps2fd3deec.jpg

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Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Markus very nice work on the cylinders. Permatex has a special compound for sealing cylinders and hydraulics I use it all the time and it works real good. At the moment I do not have the number for it but if you want it I can get it for you. Ed

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Then the tube needed a clean-up. For this i made a simple 4 jaw chuck, whitch worked really fine for this light cut. After this i made some brass cubes for connecting the pipes. Again I made a little tool to chuck the square stock centric in the 3 jaw.

Ah, Permatex! Amazon supply this stuff in Germany. I'll take a try on the cylinders for the next model.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psc007f34a.jpg

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Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

There are more pictures from the cylinders, so here we go. Pic 1 and 2 is the bucket cylinder (equal on the R984 and the R9100). Pic #3 is the stick cylinder (single on the R9100 with a much bigger diameter, 30mm bore and 18mm rod), pic #4 is a hoist cylinder for the R9100 and the last pc shows the front end of the R984-hoist cylinder in detail.

Hope, those many pictures are not boring you guys!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ps66ac6e7b.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...psf790243a.jpg

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Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Ah some more of you excellent work. The tube bending is hard I have done some on my excavator. Ed

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

I just found out, that there is no picture in my album just showing a completed cylinder, anyway, here a last pic for now from the cylinders.

Then I wanna continue with some railing work i did for both excavators. It´s all brass tubes with 4mm diameter, just the same as for the hydraulic pipes. The railings in the last 2 pics belong to the R9100. I used a small tube bender and a microflame to heat up the pipes before bending. That makes the brass soft.

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Very nice machine work. Clever turning jigs! I'm watchin til she turns sod
Keep up the good work and keep them pictures coming! :)

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

The best is yet to come... wait till you see how big the digging bucket is. :eek: :D

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

@Kevin

Hi, what kind of soldering/ brazing? Silver or soft? Did you use any flux?

@Joe

well, yes... the bucket...:cool: don't forget the chains :)

let me just throw in the counter weight. It was milled from a solid Aluminum block 410x180x80mm with a weight of 16Kg. The finished Block is round about 5Kg and way too light. It will receive some inlays from lead to bring it to the necessary weight again. I try to bring it up to 17Kg. First some drawings, you can see the lead blocks inside the weight, how it should be finished and right from the mill.

Re: 1/10 Liebherr Excavator R 984 Litronic
 

Hi Markus that Permatex sealant is Permatex Viscosity Hydraulic Pipe Sealant # 54550 I get it in 50 Ml bottle on line for $24 and change from ALL-Spec Ind . Ed