nick

so back to the Hesketh. Here's v2 of my forks. turns out it's almost impossible to turn the end of these things down to 1.5mm and then thread them. so a quick rethink later... So now I pre-drill to 1.4mm so I get an interference fit pushing in a pre-threaded 1.5mm steel rod. Easy eh? although 1/8th, they are still quite small to be machining 'by hand'!

Hi all, here’s today’s exciting instalment of ‘fun with lathes’ I’m getting into these 3 part slick tyres now, so I thought I would make a ‘thing’ for turning them a bit more reliably. the wheels are printed split down the centreline so they have two good faces, a third ring along with internal steps in the tyres holds the things together. This does leave a seam of course, hence the lathe cleanup bit. I’ve done it this way so the mating faces can be sanded dead flat. so to join then, I turned a couple of cones from nylon, and machined a rod and tube setup so that the tailstock one can rotate freely in the Chuck. then it’s just a matter of squeezing the tyre between the two and spinning the thing up and machining it true. It’s pretty good for clamping them too when I bond them together. thanks for looking! Nick

Finished my little dividing plate. machined the inner draw taper from a 10mm steel bolt (cos I can now with my chunky new lathe!) and made a knurled Ali knob. Currently Im just using a pin to lock everything. I am toying with incorporating a microswitch in the lock mechanism to prevent the lathe starting when it’s all locked off which is bound to happen at some point. I’ve left the outer expansion lock as 3D printed so it’s sacrificial and easily replaced if (when!) this happens as a last resort. i must confess, Im quite pleased with how this turned out - almost looks like a ‘proper one’ 😎👍

Well Frank, most ‘normal’ people think CAD/CAM/Printing is cheating, so you just cheated at the cheating in effect🧐👍😎 where will it end? here’s my (now old school) steam powered CAD version. Nick

Fair cop, Your greater experience is showing here! Although it still jumped to some odd conclusions with the tyres ! pretty amazing nevertheless

A bit off topic, but I'm knocking some wheels up for someone, following a conversion with Frank ( @albergman ) about ai, I thought I would try something. I need a square on version of this photo to use as a canvas in fusion, as I often do. It's really hard to perspective correct circles in photoshop etc, so I thought I would ask chatGPT... and it only went and did it. It hasn't quite perfectly removed the perspective (the wheel centres aren't centered for example, but they are round and the correct relative size) but it's pretty damn good. Amazing - thanks for the idea Frank! Nick

That’s very kind thanks. Did you crack my ‘code’ as well then? 😎😜Square is 45° Multiples, triangle 60° multiples so it’s easy to pick up the right hole without looking too hard. Nick

More fun with lathes ... First I added a 3rd axis scale on the saddle. A real mystery why Chester doesn't do this as standard, it was incredibly easy to do and the head they supply is 3 axis already. Next, after my little test piece worked, I decided I needed a robust and accurate way of rotating the work for machining, so I came up with a dividing head that will slide into the rear face of the lathe. I designed a pair of tapers that pull into each other to grip the inside of the main drive, this means it can be rotated then locked, plus if something does go wrong, it will just slip rather than do damage. After some CAD shenanigans, here's the CNC cut divider plate Not standard in design, but what I need. So it's drilled for common positions - multiples of 45° and 30° and marked up in degrees for everything else. So this was my first go at something like this. I flooded all the engraving roughly with tamiya x1 then just polished off the excess. quite pleased with how it turned out! here's the first test fit on the lathe. I'll make all the fittings from ali once I've proven everything works with the 3D printed versions. Thanks for looking! Nick

16 weeks today, he's going to be a big lad hopefully!

People called Nick have mandatory new puppies on this site it would appear. this is Doug

BTW I didn’t go to these lengths JUST to make that part, there will be many others! This was just a proof of concept 🧐👍

Hi all, time for another update. I got stuck a while back machining some 4 axis parts. Basically fusion 360 want about two grand a year to enable ‘advanced manufacturing’ which in my case means using the 4th axis on my CNC machine. I can’t justify this. MAKERA cam the freebie CAD/CAM that comes with my CNC machine does support 4 axis machining BUT only for relief paths. To translate that, it will cut out a complex shape like this: but it won’t allow anything else, like drilling or milling a slot. so what? Well I’ve made most of my rear suspension from Ali now so it will carry big, heavy wheels. The weak spot is the little fork affairs that pick up on the top link and long radius arms. so anyway, to cut a long story still quite long, I got a new lathe 😎👍 Which of course I wanted anyway. I then set about mounting the little mill you can see in the foreground on the saddle of the lathe. I worked out that I just needed to drill and tap the existing column of the mill to pick up on the handily very stiff toolpost pillar of the lathe. very easy with a shiny new lathe! and here it is. It’s actually better than it looks, and is rigid enough for a little dinky thing. so what was it all for then? Making this thing now I know it’s viable I’m going to CNC cut/etch a proper divider plate for the lathe head so I can get accurate repeatable angles. all good fun, thanks for looking Nick

My mate has finished his Mercedes now, and I must admit despite moaning about these kits, it does look damn good.

Spoke to my Dutch friend yesterday and he is producing CAD 2mm shells for all the body panels now we have the full sized version all signed off. Why aren’t you doing this yourself I hear you ask? Good question I say I really need to stop this now. anyway, I COULD do this yes, all the curvy body stuff isn’t very mechanical and although it’s ultimately just the same .stl files for printing, solid object modelling software like Fusion 360 isn’t suited to this stuff. Things like Blender however are very good at this. Alex is blender whizz so that’s his bag. It’s very easy for him to produce these things that would take me hours. Strangely he’s the other way round and struggles with fusion. I’ve got this theory that there’s only room in your head for Blender OR fusion but not both When I do try and improve my Blender skills I can feel it pushing fusion stuff out of the other ear. maybe I’m just old now.

better now! really don’t understand how I got it that wrong🧐