Anyone make any r/c related new year's resolutions? I did. For a long time I've been wanting to get my r/c business off the ground. It's hard to do with a wife and family,especially when the wife isn't on-board with the idea. Well I finally got her on-board so this is the year to make it happen!
First off though,I have a few back projects that need clearing out of the way so I thought I'd share one with you guys here. This is one that's been sitting around here waaayyy too long. It's a motorcycle swingarm for NCNitro,I'm sorry it's taken so long Joe and thanks for being so patient.
So let's get on to what it looks like and how I'm making the new one. The problems with the stocker are simple,it's plastic and it needs to be made so the axle position can be adjusted to allow for an upgrade to a belt drive. Here's a couple of pics of the original arm. The new one will be billet 6061-T6 aluminum.
The first part of the project is to measure the size and locations of everything and then use that data make a CAD drawing to program my cnc mill from. Figuring some things like an arc radius can be difficult to match exactly,so we'll see how I do.
With the drawing done, the first thing to do is pick out my material and rough saw it to size. Sorry for the pic quality from here down,I kept forgetting my camera so these are from my phone.
From there I then mill them to get clean surfaces and the sides and ends square to the the top and bottom. This will allow me to accurately locate my holes in the next step.
Now I can use my drawing and put in the holes and cut-outs to mate to two pieces together.
With the 2 pieces mated and fit to each other I must now have a way to mill the profile. To accomplish this I add a couple of holes to each piece,in a calculated loctation of course. Then I find another block,we call this a sacrificial block, and I drill and tap holes in the same locations. I can now mount the two pieces to the sacrificial block.
Now it's time to make it look like something! Again referring to the cad drawing,I progam the profile. I'll make shallow first cut to check that my profile matches the original part.
Well as you can see,I missed the radius by a bit on the front side of the arm. Like I said, they can hard to match. So I make a few cahnges on the CAD drawing,face off the top of the blocks(they were intentionally left too thick) and take another shallow cut to see how my changes look.
Ok,that's better. Still not exact,but close enough I can live with it. So now I go ahead and mill the profile to the depth of the part plus a little.
Next is to add a small radius on the corners around to part. I used layout fluid so I could see to blend it properly.
I didn't cut through since there would be nothing to keep the part in place and I didn't want risk the part being sucked into the cut and damaged. So from here I removed it from the the sacrificial block and took it to the band saw. Carefully I cut away the big chunks of scrap.
That's where I'm going to have to end for today. Don't go too far,I'll have updates tomorrow.
First off though,I have a few back projects that need clearing out of the way so I thought I'd share one with you guys here. This is one that's been sitting around here waaayyy too long. It's a motorcycle swingarm for NCNitro,I'm sorry it's taken so long Joe and thanks for being so patient.
So let's get on to what it looks like and how I'm making the new one. The problems with the stocker are simple,it's plastic and it needs to be made so the axle position can be adjusted to allow for an upgrade to a belt drive. Here's a couple of pics of the original arm. The new one will be billet 6061-T6 aluminum.
The first part of the project is to measure the size and locations of everything and then use that data make a CAD drawing to program my cnc mill from. Figuring some things like an arc radius can be difficult to match exactly,so we'll see how I do.
With the drawing done, the first thing to do is pick out my material and rough saw it to size. Sorry for the pic quality from here down,I kept forgetting my camera so these are from my phone.
From there I then mill them to get clean surfaces and the sides and ends square to the the top and bottom. This will allow me to accurately locate my holes in the next step.
Now I can use my drawing and put in the holes and cut-outs to mate to two pieces together.
With the 2 pieces mated and fit to each other I must now have a way to mill the profile. To accomplish this I add a couple of holes to each piece,in a calculated loctation of course. Then I find another block,we call this a sacrificial block, and I drill and tap holes in the same locations. I can now mount the two pieces to the sacrificial block.
Now it's time to make it look like something! Again referring to the cad drawing,I progam the profile. I'll make shallow first cut to check that my profile matches the original part.
Well as you can see,I missed the radius by a bit on the front side of the arm. Like I said, they can hard to match. So I make a few cahnges on the CAD drawing,face off the top of the blocks(they were intentionally left too thick) and take another shallow cut to see how my changes look.
Ok,that's better. Still not exact,but close enough I can live with it. So now I go ahead and mill the profile to the depth of the part plus a little.
Next is to add a small radius on the corners around to part. I used layout fluid so I could see to blend it properly.
I didn't cut through since there would be nothing to keep the part in place and I didn't want risk the part being sucked into the cut and damaged. So from here I removed it from the the sacrificial block and took it to the band saw. Carefully I cut away the big chunks of scrap.
That's where I'm going to have to end for today. Don't go too far,I'll have updates tomorrow.
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