Rear Frame

The rear frame is mostly welded into place.  Just ran out of light for the last few welds so will do them in the morning.  It has no triangulation as yet, but is still a lot stronger than I though which is encoraging.  

I also ordered the sheet for the sides which was meant to arrive today but didnt, so I guess tomorrow.

Just another quick photo to show the complete floor.  Also in the trailer you can see the very lovely aluminium floor which will be bent into the steps.  Looking forward to doing that.

I previously mentioned the front curved piece of floor but didnt show it as it wasnt curved at the time.  It is now:

The front frame started to go on today.  This is the first time I've tried welding the 1m wall steel for quite a while.  My previous attempts have been less than impressive, but all the practice I've had recently means I now have no problem.  Which is a good thing since the entire frame is made of the stuff!

2nd floor piece cut and in place.  Next comes the front rounded piece

More floor

Finished the floor frame and cut the first piece of floor plate to shape.  I have done enough welding now that I'm doing a pretty good job!

Floor Plate

Just a quick one.  Purchased the floor plate.  It is 2.1mm steel and should do the job perfectly. Currently it flexes a bit when you walk on the areas it is bridging.  Once the frame is welded in underneath is will be lovely and solid.  I will start cutting out the wheel well holes and weld in the bottom frame today.  The floor itself wont be welded in till the front and rear frames are in position.

Internode

Well if the extremely fast Broadband wasn't enough of a reason to love Internode, here's another one - they are putting up a significant amount of sponsorship for the project.

I would like to think I am particularly special, but in fact Internode are rediculously generous when it comes to this sort of thing.  I (and many others) have already been a beneficary of this via Internode's sponsorship of the South Australian Juniors amongst other things.  So a huge thank you to them!

In other news, floor plate will be collected today.  Did the sums on the balance for the trailer and it turns out that leaving the axel right where it is will give a tow ball weight of around 50kg which is perfectly acceptable.  Total weight of the trailer will be aroung 450kg.  Way off the 750 limit where it needs breaks, which saves me about $350.

So good news all round really.  Stay tuned!

Building work commences

Started modifying the trailer today.  The design builds on the boat trailer with a main beam down the middle and the floor and fuselage structure build off that.  The kinked cross beams of the boat trailer have to be taken into account, but this isnt much trouble.  The small length of tube sitting on top is one of the pieces that will be welded in to create a flat frame for the floor plate to sit on.

My welding was rather a lot better this time round owing to the much thicker material.

Next comes the floor plate, but this cant go down till I know the position of the wheels.  I suspect they need to go further back as my design has a lot more weight at the back.  I am currently working out the weights on all the parts and using a bit of high school maths to work out the final C of G.  Not too difficult, but time consuming.  The trailer in its current state as seen in the pics is 113kg.  Not too bad.  I would like to keep the whole thing under 750kg so it doesn't need its own breaks.

Curved screen photos

While I had been touting the virtues of a curved screen, I had yet to actually see what it looked like.  So today I did a mock up using a nice white piece of MDF for the screen.  Some of the issues with a curved screen are the focus across the  width of the screen and the image shape which ends up taller in the middle than in the edges - somthing I have a software solution lined up for

The problems are far less significant than I thought.  Some correction will be needed but not much, and I didnt notice a focus problem.  The feeling of immersion sitting in fron of the screen is excellent!  The final screen will be wider as well, so I am excited to see how it turns out.

GFA Seminar

The Gliding Federation of Australia seminar was on this weekend.  I took the Sim along to display as well as giving a talk on progress so far and what I hope to achieve.  

It all seemed to go pretty well.  There was lots of interest, and lots of people had a go.  I would have liked more time for people to try it but I think most people saw it working at least.

If anyone at the seminar didn't manage to catch me, please feel free to email me any questions or comments.

Lovely Flamingo

Just to keep you interested, and yes the title is relevant. I'm using mainly Rhino 4.0 for my CAD work. It renders the images I have been posting so far and doesnt do a bad job.

I just installed a new renderer (called Flamingo) which does a rather better job, and I thought the result looked good enough to post as a "new" development. Really its just the same with a shiny new cover. But it looks nice so what the hell. By the way, I am open to suggestions on the colour for the wheel arches.

Other progress continues, but on boring things like hinges and waterproofing. Very dull!

Instrument Panel

I did promise to show a photo of the panel fresh off the CNC. Here it is, though I think I will modify it, I was trying to keep the same overall shape as the actual LS7 panel, but to fit in the 12" screen makes it too big and bulky. I'll slim it down a bit

Excuse my bored look. The flash on my camera takes ages to charge! :-)

CAD work a'plenty

Detailed design work continues, boring though it is. Actually, it's not that boring, but does take time. The overall design is pretty much finalised, so now I need to make sure the whole thing will actually fit together.

The area we will be covering in this episode boys and girls, is the steps/ramp/sides of the trailer. As you will note, the previous problem of a wheel just sticking through the side of the opened door is gone. It will now be covered mostly by the steps, and partly by a small door which needs to be there so that when open, the wheel has a normal wheel-well sides space surrounding it.

The pics are a little tricky to interperate at the moment since I have yet to differentiate between different panels, so it just looks like one big white sheet. Still, it gives an idea.

Also the trailer now has a more sensible front, removing the likelyhood of chopping people's legs off if they happen to be in the way. And it looks better too.

More soon . . .

Quickie

Just a quick note. Currently nutting out design details, so not much to show at the moment. Will be running a piece of MDF through the CNC machine at uni later today to see how my first go at the instrument panel will look. Will post photos when it's done.