20070220

February 20, 2007

Making Parts

I did all the "markings" on the tail pieces from the formed aluminum and angle kit. I then decided before I go any further, I better make sure I am marking these pieces correctly. The weather warmed up enough I was able to head back outside. Dad came over and we worked on making bends in the aluminum, along with making cuts with the bandsaw. Once we practiced on scrap aluminum, we pressed on... making our first pieces.

Some pieces just required sanding down to the correct length. Other pieces, like the one shown (T12-08) has a bend and cut-outs in it. We took this piece real slow, just to make sure we were doing it right. (Remember, I am NOT an experienced builder.. except maybe for some R/C stuff, and even with that, I am not real good.)

Here we clamped a board to the drill press table to use as a guide in drilling the outer holes. Worked really nice.

One of the cuts made with the bandsaw. We tried to make the 1/16" radius on the corners with a drill. Hard to do, as you can see in this pic it looks kind of butchered. It really is not all that bad once filed down and deburred.

Just to the Right of the blue circles you see the bend line. We will put this on the brake and try to bend it over to 57 degrees.

I originally only made a bend line on the top surface of the piece. To see where I am bending, I had to mark the underside as well. We placed the line just under the crush plate, and made the bend.

And BAM! There it is, a 57 degree bend. The 1/16" bend radius comes out just about right (as far as I can tell), with the current brake set-up. Any more than a 1/16" bend, and I will need to modify how I bend it.

We only finished up about 5 pieces tonight, but we learned a LOT! The 1" hole cut in the back-ground was made with a fly-cutter on the drill press. I was told that using a drill press with a fly-cutter is dangerous. Just make sure everything is clamped down, and that your drill press is on a slow speed, and you should be alright.