Just thought I'd post some pics as they of marginally related interest. The greenpower race series is an electric car racing challenge for year 7-11s & they have a national final at goodwood in october. Last year we did OK - 5th place - next year we want to win....
Anyway here is the body plug in construction - I designed the form in solidworks & produced dxf drawings of the body cross section profiles. These were cut out of MDF by a mate with a home-made CNC router & we started filling in the gaps with foam last week.
1st here's a render of the car from solidworks
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Andy's home- made router
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The assembled mdf profiles
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Very cool, I used to love Green power when I was at school, great fun going around school in a battery powered go kart Keep us all Updated

Blimey those 7-11 year olds are bright - most can't count let alone build a CNC router

When are we going to see"Build you own CNC......." plans posted on here?
I am sure some on here would like one.

You can see how he made it using linear bearings, leadscrews & stepper motors. It has microswitches to set zeros in x & y - he does the z manually (as it changes when you swap the tool).
The stepper motor drives are controlledby RS232 from his laptop running some software he bought for 80 odd notes.
Superb quality output & free for the school (I'm always amazed what the girls get given).
The router part is just the motor off a DIY router/rebater thing. It cut really fast actually - looked like ~1"/s with a 3mm router in 6mm MDF
Bob

quote:

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Originally posted by Confused but excited.
When are we going to see"Build you own CNC......." plans posted on here?
I am sure some on here would like one.

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Some progress on the buck - hoping this will be done in the next few days.
Learned that the blue builders foam gets dissolved by EVERYTHING.
And high build cellulose primer is loverly stuff to sand.....

more info on http://www.cauc.co.uk

[Edited on 31/3/08 by Bob C]
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Excellent work! Can't wait to see more

Oh dear, takes me back to the 70's when it was the Shell Challenge.

Super light spaceframe made out of 6~10mm tube powered by a Honda C50 engine.

How times change

Steve

progress - we've made the moulds & started laying up the body panels.
The stiffening ribs on the moulds were 2cm strips of scrap PCB stuck on the outside with hot melt glue & then glassed over. That little idea worked extremely well. On these pictures a layer of gelcoat has gone on & been stabilised by glass mat tissue. Next a couple of layers of carbon fibre weave (Alan loves this stuff).
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that was the back of the car
This is the top with a couple of layers of carbon on
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First body part popped very nicely out of the mould last night - really pleased with the result: everything fits rather nicely!
Incidentally the school's greenpower website
http://www.cauc.co.uk
has a colour "poll" going on at the moment (you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page) & I'd appreciate anybody who can be bothered voting for a light colour - at the moment dark green & black are winning & the car would be invisible (being small & faster than everything else on the track - I hope) So I'd appreciate any votes for yellow, orange or even pink!

[Edited on 6/6/08 by Bob C]

[Edited on 6/6/08 by Bob C]
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More progress - Finished car had its first race today, at Croft. This car came 2nd, only beaten by....... our other car ;^)
Good days racing & this car will speed up a lot with some shakedown miles and proper instruments (it raced with a bike speedo I nicked off my own bike this morning)
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One more: the car needs a paint job too.... Pleased (& smug) at the moment!
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Good to see your creation on the track! Looks great and very close t the concept render.

now painted, won its 2nd race by 3.5 laps.
Yes that's gulf racing livery. There's a little burr walnut dashboard too.......
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This car just won the 2008 Greenpower national final.
I can't tell you what an absolutely brilliant day the team had yesterday. Going well is good; winning is brilliant, but winning the national final is just unbelievable; the girls will remember that day for ever!