Working Towards Battle Mountain '10

I've been working hard on getting the Orion race worthy.  Since it is still not even road worthy after our crash in Michigan, it's been a lot of work.  The damage to the wing assembly was sufficient that we decided to make a new one and incorporate a number of upgrades we've been planning for some time.

Where we're going:

The rendering shows the jig, the central "Shear Link", the white foam core for the central part of the wing, and the port side "Knuckle" where the port side axle will attach and be adjustable.

and here is a pic of most of the parts I've made to date to make it happen.  Actual epoxy work with fiberglass and carbon fiber should start in a day or two. The blue machinable wax cores are for the inboard wing mounts, so that the carbon wing will be hollow at that location to clamp onto the shear link.

Ciao.

Better Late than never.

I used to have a blog on Warren Beauchamp's excellant recumbents.com site, but I got out of the habit of maintaining it. It wraps up with the initial development of the vehicle and birthing it at the last Nissan Speed Challenge in Casa Grande, Arizona, in the spring of 2007.  Since then, a lot has happened, so I am going to try and document it over the course of several blog entries. 

Ciao
Raymond

First Part!

Well, I think I am finally going to have a go at this blog thing. We'll see how it goes.

Tonight I made my first part on the CNC I converted:

Perhaps the thing I am happiest about is that the controller (on the laptop) and the Digital Readout or DRO (in the background) both read X 0.0000 and Y0.0000 after the run. That is really good for a first run with hundreds of lines of G-code, running on stepper motors:


Here's a closer look at the part. It is an end fitting for the new wing I am making. It's not quite finished yet as I need to cut a rectangular slot in the middle that will hold the new axles and the big tooling lump on the bottom will be removed eventually:


I have to say I am very pleased with the results, especially considering it was a first run on a machine I built.

Ciao until next time.