Rebarreling and Home-Shop Machining

I designed a built this prototype 3-link rear suspension with Panhard bar for this 1/10 scale radio control car.  I used a variety of materials.  I made the frame rails  of G10.  This is an epoxy based fiberglass material that is very dense and strong.  Black in this case; it comes in colors.  I produced these frame rails on a new Scroll saw.  I cut the 1/4 inch laminate with a 15 TPI blade.  I replaced the blade about every 6 inches of cut as the material is quite abrasive on the teeth.  A slow speed worked the best

I made the horizontal (black) parts of quasi grade graphite laminate in a .084 thickness.  This is fairly expensive stuff but produces very nice looking parts.  I either cut this on the scroll saw with a fine tooth blade or used the Dremel with the narrow hard cutoff wheel (a respirator is suggested to work both G10 and graphite plate).

Finally I needed a lower shock mount in 6061 T6 aluminum which I had on hand.  We milled this .150 inch thick and then found our center punch with a Wiggler, then center drilled then through drilled with the tap size drill for a 2.5 mm thread.  This was all done from the first setup in photo 2.

We contoured the Aluminum on the scroll saw in preparation for final finish on the stationary belt sander and then the Dremel drum sander to get the reverse curve.

I first drilled the chassis plates for a threaded pin (4-40 with a protruding .089 pin) and a securing screw #4-40 TPI spaced 1/4 inch apart.  I put the shock mount in place to give me maximum clearance on all the car parts and then center punched one of the holes with a transfer punch.  I then returned the part to the milling vise. Leveled it with a Starrett Combination square and located, center drilled, tap drilled, tapped the first hole.  I move the carriage .25 inch and repeated the operations to get the second hole with the correct spacing.  The parts came out nice.

|  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this