lowen93

Have you got any pictures of how the car currently is?

How long is it? What material are you gonna use and how to make it?

To make my Mardave stuff different from everyone else's I've started making polycarbonate parts. Here is the first attempt at a set of wishbones from 10mm polycarbonate. Close up the finish could be better so I am having to re assess the process to make them. The new way of making Mardave suspension arms is by machining out the overall size and drilling the holes to use for location, then bolting them into a vice to make sure that what I am cutting is held securely. As most racing cars are covered in stickers and sponsors I bought some clear vinyl you can print onto from a normal printer so that I could make my own stickers and make my cars look more realistic. Started off by printing on normal paper to guage the size I wanted then messing around with shading to make the clear vinyl printing visible as it kept coming out almost fully transparent where ink was printed. At

There have been two on ebay in the last month but I couldn't justify buying them when It's a set of wheels and front chassis plate that is needed to make one when I can make the parts needed. Swapping between both sizes has been quite handy so far, I've used it as a GT10 a few times at my local club now and has been just as fun as a normal GT12 but with the ease of the extra weight and 2S grunt to make it easier to drive. A diff has been fitted as it was undriveable around corners but now handles quite nicely considering it has temporary wheels and tyres on it. The gearing is a big issue though, with standard Mardave tyres, a 54 tooth spur and 12 tooth pinion it is just about tolerable for accelerating on a medium carpet track however a small track and it barely has any pace due to being geared wrong, as 54 is the biggest spur I'm going to have to make some spur gears and also elongate the holes in the motor mount to provide the extra adjustment. 60tooth is going to be my starting point. It's gotten quite a bit of attention at my local clubs too as it's a bit different and rather noticeable with them silly wheels on it! Updated view of the car assembled how it has been raced This is the start of the 1/10 Mardave wheels. It seemed a good idea to make the wheels from solid plastic but they're just too heavy for racing. It would be much easier to just make some sleeves that fit over a standard Mardave wheel

As I want to convert some of the parts on my Mardaves to polycarbonate so they look different from everyone else but all match my stuff I've been doing some batches of suspension arms to test the material. The first set of arms I made kept vibrating at the very end of the cut and leaving big divots in them which I think was a combination of ramping down constantly instead of cutting 1mm, then 2mm, etc but also the machine has settled a bit after some hours of use so all three axes had some play and allowed the cutter to vibrate slightly. This was fixed by winding the little M3 bolts that put tension on the runners by 1/4 of a turn tighter and made it all smooth and precise again, I didn't notice the play because I've been quite sedate cutting so far whilst learning what cutting speeds I can get away with so there has been very little stress on the cutters so far. I have also noticed you can hold the motor shafts and manually turn each spindle by hand now to line the machine up with material, it seems to have "run in" after roughly 5 - 10 hours worth of work. My plan for making parts like these is to cut out the outline of the part and drill some holes to use as location holes, then bolt them to a plate in a vice so that what I am cutting is held instead of it falling down when almost cut, this should mean I can try to leave material for making final cuts to try to give a nice surface finish. Here are some pictures of the centre marks for the holes and the blank cut outs, these are as they came from the machine, not ramping down whilst cutting seems to have stopped the burrs I was getting. Not RC milling but this shows the speed of the machine and some engraving which is what these types of machines were originally designed for doing.

Ideal donor for the speed challenge at the price it sold for. Tyres looked "special"

Definitely liking the styling was there any science behind the wing or just what looked right? The first picture has some of the side plates above the top of the wing and the later ones are level at the back of the wing, would having the side plates 15mm or so higher than the wing help make it work better?

Have many sidecars been running so far this year? What specs are they running or any pictures? I'm currently building one based on mardave suspension with 17.5t brushless and 2s lipo, would be good to race against some others

Did you try printing any stickers or still waiting on paper? I've just bought some vinyl stucker paper for use in a home printer, that just advises using the best quality printing possible. I should think the printer would have a stronger effect on the quality than the paper, but no good if the paper won't stick lol

Winpc-nc or whatever came with it is very limited in capability, but is good for testing the machine manually once it's built. You open up a drawing from autocad or solidworks, set zero on the z axis and it runs so very simple but limited to engraving etc so I don't use it. What I use takes a few hours to read online manuals for the basics and some youtube videos helped too, but is mainly a case of getting used to what buttons do but is very simple once used to where the buttons are, no more complicated than using microsoft office. You open a drawing from autocad into DolphinCAD and then specify what lines are for cutting around or drilling, it takes a few clicks for each line or hole. You can also use this program for drawing but autocad and draftsight are much easier to use for drawing. After this you click a button that takes you into DolphinCAM where you input what tools you want to use or load a toolfile that has previously been saved, then select lines and specify if you cut around, on or inside them, drill holes. From this you can specify feedrates, cut depths, ramping and a good range of other options about cutting. It also tells you how long it will take to cut aswell as being able to open a simulation to see what it will look like when cutting and if theresany clearance issues. After this you convert the toolpath file into a format for the machine which is Mach3 in this case, open the nc file in Mach3, line the material up with where you are cutting and push go. All in if you were to cut a 50mm square it would take less than 5minutes to import the drawing, convert it to a toolpath and push go. More complicated parts will just take more time. As it's all hobby level software it's got good features but still simple to use for novices and there's plenty of help on dedicated cnc sites. I'll take some screenshots soon to show importing a drawing to pushing go.

Vapextech compact 4800mah 65C http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/330910151972?redirect=mobile Not the cheapest but weigh just over 200grams and are only just slightly longer than 1s / 4cell batteries. Been using them weekly since March with no issues

Haha, going out is the problem, you get ideas put in your head! The 6th picture in my last post shows my computer screen whilst Mach3 (the control software that reads the g code and translates it into motor signals) is open, there are the job coordinates shown on that screen which you click zero or set to whatever value you want. Then on the right the toolpath is shown and a crosshair shows where the machine currently is in relation to the datum point in the toolpath program. It's just a case of lining up the material to the toolpath and making sure there's clearance. In another tab info of the actual machine's coordinates are stored. This zero is set by making it travel to all the limit switches and setting the maximum travel for each axis, this is needed for things like toolchanges which bigger machines can do.

Got myself a new employee in my workshop to be in charge of health and safety. I chose one of these for the characterful look, but also because unlike a dyson it runs at 600w or 1200w so is nice and quiet at 600w but plenty powerful as a dust extractor. For my Mardave GT10 conversion I need to make a first set of wheels before thinking about getting some lightweight ones moulded. So why not mill some out! It was also a good chance to learn how to use z profiling in DolphinCAM to make more than just flat sides. I was cutting Nytralon bar which hapoily melted with heat so was tricky stopping it from melting when cutting. Roughing out was done on 240mm/min with a 3mm end mill and the profile was done at 480mm/min with a 3mm ball end mill and 0.5mm deviance from my profile line. You can change the profile resolution to improve cutting speed or the surface finish so I chose speed for my first set. Also for my Mardave I bought some 10mm polycarbonate to see if I could cut clear edges. So I decided to make some front a arms / wishbones. They came out quite well with minor burred edges in places and was cut at 240mm/min and 50% overlap on the top face. I rubbed the sides with 800 wet and dry to give a frosted look as I didn't want to spend hours polishing them. I've been playing around cutting gentler cuts but faster which seems better than slower big cuts. Overlapping the toolpath seems to give good results too. Here's some more videos. http://youtu.be/jELgj-9zWCY http://youtu.be/Yc2kMT66oAg http://youtu.be/eJvaEso4w1c http://youtu.be/z8v-NX9O3tc

Would Mardave suspension be suitable for you? You're welcome to the measurements of Mardave parts if you want them

Polycarbonate comes in a range of thicknesses and is nice and tough. Have you got any drawings or sketches of what you want?