Here and there through last week I’ve been prepping the printed parts, starting with lots of drilling holes to final diameters for journals, couplers, etc., and a seemingly unending series of episodes with weathering powder & light flat clear coat. Here’s the fasteners.
Everything needed a flat clear coat to dull the shiny print, and help the powder to stick. After that, the clear coat pretty much disappears the powder, so I had to put it on heavy, spray, and do a second coat.
After that, I got back into shearing, this time with .025 sheet from Amazon. Larger sheets I propped up from the rear of the shear with 1-2-3 blocks.
In front, an aluminum bar is set to (in this case) .188". I used a strip of 3/16" styrene stock to gauge that gap, since there wasn’t an easy way to measure it.
The material wanted to twist some, so I held the edge with a scrap of aluminum 1/8" angle, and put pressure on that with one hand while working the shear with the other.
Seemed to work well enough.
These strips are for the journal straps. The next step is to bend them, and Al suggested using a form. I don’t have a mill to make one out of aluminum (which you could really put the pressure on), so I made the tool out of acrylic.
One part makes the inside bends first, then the other one makes the outside. The bends aren’t as sharp as I’d like, but I think I can manually improve that.
A final (printed) part on the same tool base will be used for drilling.
These straps will probably take me all day tomorrow, but hopefully I’ll get into some chassis assembly Monday, we’ll see.
Cheers,
Cliff
