Scratch build Nitro tethered race car, second try!

[Roog]

I thought I would stay indoors (trying to be a bit sociable) and make odd shaped holes in the RC box.
Everything just about fits leaving the charger cable poking out at the front. I have fashioned an angle bracket to hold the box in between the front chassis rails. Servo axis is horizontal and roughly level with the carb axis when in position in car.

 

[Roog]

Having cleared up all of the tiny chips of black plastic swarf from my office carpet due to filing holes in the RC box, I got bored and wandered out to my shed, to make …..

A base for my soldering ‘grabber arm’

Bit of light relief! Reminds me of the Pixar animated anglepois

Not sure whether to glue some magnets on the bottom to stick it to a metal sheet base or drill 3 holes equally spaced around it to bolt it to a flat base?

Easier to reposition with magnets I suppose

 

[Doom!]

Bit of light relief! Reminds me of the Pixar animated anglepois

looks good.

 

[CertifiedMike]

That arm is COOL!!!
I imagine there will be trial, error and redesign in every custom build.
Maybe its just as well to get the ideas off a screen, out of your head and actually built and not struggle so much with the redesigns?
OCD keeps me in a constant loop of redesigns. I try to just sit and build with a plan and stick to that plan as best I can... unless something does actually fail.
Your build is beyond my ability. Even if it fails catastrophicly, you've built a unique and quite cool machine that I am in awe of. I think lots of ppl here might feel similarly.
Maybe get some foam in the radio box to keep your gear from banging around? No suspension might make it a bit rough in there.
I think your idea for a rub rail is fantastic!
Is it possible to make the mold longer so where it curled in will be discarded anyways?
Seeing the car with the windscreen on brings me right back to my days as a boy, looking at cool old antique toy racecars. Mostly, expensive die cast and other "collector" toys that a young boy prob shouldn't have yet. I love your car!!!

 

[Roog]

That arm is COOL!!!
I imagine there will be trial, error and redesign in every custom build.
Maybe its just as well to get the ideas off a screen, out of your head and actually built and not struggle so much with the redesigns?
OCD keeps me in a constant loop of redesigns. I try to just sit and build with a plan and stick to that plan as best I can... unless something does actually fail.
Your build is beyond my ability. Even if it fails catastrophicly, you've built a unique and quite cool machine that I am in awe of. I think lots of ppl here might feel similarly.
Maybe get some foam in the radio box to keep your gear from banging around? No suspension might make it a bit rough in there.
I think your idea for a rub rail is fantastic!
Is it possible to make the mold longer so where it curled in will be discarded anyways?
Seeing the car with the windscreen on brings me right back to my days as a boy, looking at cool old antique toy racecars. Mostly, expensive die cast and other "collector" toys that a young boy prob shouldn't have yet. I love your car!!!

Thanks @CertifiedMike i think it’s ‘fear of failure’ I agree it is good to get going and make something, it’s the living with the limitations which bugs me, clearly, well engineered kit cars have been mostly debugged by the time they are released, mine are all one off prototypes so I should really learn to embrace their idiosyncrasies.
When I showed the chaos at the club my chassis they didn’t laughter, perhaps they were just being polite.

I can live with the body shell, I might try to spring it with gentle heat as wickedfog suggested.

I think I have some ‘U’ section rubber trim somewhere I might put some on to see what it look like.

 

[Roog]

With regard to my little grab arm above, I wonder if anyone has any experience of using neodymium magnets?

The articulated arm is for holding larger electronics parts when soldering, the small base I have made is about 62mm in diameter, I was going to drill holes in it so that I could base to bolt it to a metal sheet base plate, when it occurred to me that I could fix some disc magnets to it and make it ‘moveable’.

The thing is I’m not sure what power or size magnets to use, I could experiment but I wondered if anyone had experience of selecting magnets for this application? Some web sites offer small disc magnets with 3kg hold force, if I put three of these on the base I’m not sure if I will be able to move it!

Because I won’t be able to ‘switch it off’ I will need to be able to slide it off. The base will be a sheet of mild steel 1 or 1.5mm thick. I’m not holding heavy objects just chunky electronics components like a potentiometer for instance.

Your ideas would be appreciated

 

[WickedFog]

With regard to my little grab arm above, I wonder if anyone has any experience of using neodymium magnets?

The articulated arm is for holding larger electronics parts when soldering, the small base I have made is about 62mm in diameter, I was going to drill holes in it so that I could base to bolt it to a metal sheet base plate, when it occurred to me that I could fix some disc magnets to it and make it ‘moveable’.

The thing is I’m not sure what power or size magnets to use, I could experiment but I wondered if anyone had experience of selecting magnets for this application? Some web sites offer small disc magnets with 3kg hold force, if I put three of these on the base I’m not sure if I will be able to move it!

Because I won’t be able to ‘switch it off’ I will need to be able to slide it off. The base will be a sheet of mild steel 1 or 1.5mm thick. I’m not holding heavy objects just chunky electronics components like a potentiometer for instance.

Your ideas would be appreciated

The 50lb pull magnet on this guy will have you crying trying to pull it off even a thin metal workbench.
https://a.co/d/acbQaOm

If you want a magnet that can be turned on and off, that you could screw that arm into, you cannot beat Noga mag bases. 8mm threaded hole.
https://a.co/d/as6cUIq

 

[CertifiedMike]

The only thing is magnets and electronics aren't always a great combo.
For wires and plugs and such, this is perfection! Lots of things I would use a set up like these for! My hands have issues sometimes so I'm always looking for gadgets like these.
I am not sure if a receiver or esc might risk damage from a magnet tho.
Never tried it.

 

[WickedFog]

The only thing is magnets and electronics aren't always a great combo.
For wires and plugs and such, this is perfection! Lots of things I would use a set up like these for! My hands have issues sometimes so I'm always looking for gadgets like these.
I am not sure if a receiver or esc might risk damage from a magnet tho.
Never tried it.

Nah. You'd be fine with that Noga base. The magnet is only pulling at the bottom. The top and sides don't have any pull to speak of. Same for the pickup tool actually. Unless you were working on an old platter hard drive, I wouldn't be worried a bit.

 

[Roog]

It’s mainly for my working on my DIY electronics projects, either soldering wires to bigger objects or connectors, nothing I do would be troubled by magnets.
I did experiment with three blobs of blu tac, great in straight pull but not with weight on the grabber.

 

[WickedFog]

It’s mainly for my working on my DIY electronics projects, either soldering wires to bigger objects or connectors, nothing I do would be troubled by magnets.
I did experiment with three blobs of blu tac, great in straight pull but not with weight on the grabber.

If blu tac worked, the Noga base stuck to a metal table or whatever is going to be more than enough pull. It is strong enough to hold itself along with a fairly sizeable swivel arm and dial indicator upside down only with half the base against metal.

If you can get an 8mm threaded stud on your soldering arm there, you could even swap it out with this arm to use on your lathe or mill too if needed.

 

[Roog]

If blu tac worked, the Noga base stuck to a metal table or whatever is going to be more than enough pull. It is strong enough to hold itself along with a fairly sizeable swivel arm and dial indicator upside down only with half the base against metal.
View attachment 216989

If you can get an 8mm threaded stud on your soldering arm there, you could even swap it out with this arm to use on your lathe or mill too if needed.

I did think about buying a magnetic DTI base despite its chunky looks, but I would need to make an adaptor as the thread on my arm is 1/4"-20 UNC, I think I might try a few neo magnets and see how it goes.

 

[Roog]

Chassis now has its RC pack, tank and glow plug battery, getting closer

Cable tie holds the glow plug on/off switch in place for now.

 

[Roog]

I had a weird time trying to bend the clear plastic screen, no amount of heat from a hot air gun would soften it! Bending it over a former when too hot to touch led to tiny little fractures in the clear plastic which looked like a pearlescent finish, clearly I’m using the wrong type of plastic for the screen, (I found it in my odds and ends box) I snapped it in two trying.

It’s given me an idea though, I’m going to try a polished aluminium screen, it will be more durable and it just needs to be representative of a screen anyway, the driver doesn’t need to see where they are going anyway!

Also, I visited the local motor factors for some paint, metallic green, gloss British racing green looked a bit dark. Need to wait for the temperature to rise a little before I errect the big cardboard box that is my spray booth.

Tomorrow is metallic screen day, we shall see what this looks like on the unpainted shell.

 

[WickedFog]

You can buy polycarbonate sheet in different thicknesses, and it bends and forms easily with heat of course.

 

[Roog]

You can buy polycarbonate sheet in different thicknesses, and it bends and forms easily with heat of course.

I thought that was what I was working with, but yes I could buy some of known type!

 

[WickedFog]

I thought that was what I was working with, but yes I could buy some of known type!

Most store blister packaging is lexan/poly

 

[Roog]

OK, so I’ve made a metal windscreen and half polished it.

And ….whilst it does look kind of cool, I have now ordered some polycarbonate sheet to try again

 

[WickedFog]

OK, so I’ve made a metal screen and half polished it.

View attachment 217747
And ….whilst it does look kind of cool, I have now ordered some polycarbonate sheet to try again

Now that I see it, I think that would look badass on there. But at least now you have a form to form the poly around if you go that route.

 

[Roog]

Now that I see it, I think that would look badass on there. But at least now you have a form to form the poly around if you go that route.

Yeah well that’s kinda embarrassing, my original multi part card pattern was copied onto a nice clean one piece card pattern, and from that I made the aluminium one, each time I drew around each generation of the pattern with a sharpie and with each generation it got larger, so the metal screen is quite a bit bigger than it was supposed to be!

I have now corrected the ‘master pattern’ ready for the polycarbonate to arrive. Must cut to the inside of the line not the outside.