MOCKUPS
Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 3:46 pm
I've recently been talking with a few new, but experienced, builders and it's come to my attention that when I talk about 'Mockups' they think I'm trying to send them back to Kindergarten. I have a hard time understanding why anybody in the fabrication business can't understand the importance of doing mockups before committing to the steel but I guess it's a 'new' thing with the 'digital' generation that expect immediate gratification. If you're got a proven design then go straight to it and weld everything up but if you're prototyping a design a wooden mockup will save you in wasted material and wasted labor. Years ago when I was involved with the Indian historical group we had plans for the Scout 640B frame but there were a few dimensions missing that none of us could figure out. I built an entire frame from wood and the missing dimensions were easily found and verified to work. It took two days to build the mockup which was nothing compared to the days and weeks we had all invested in trying to do Cad drawings and 3D renderings to find the missing 'offsets' in some of the tubing runs. Sometimes the old ways are faster and more accurate than modern methods when you're dealing with minor differences in a particular design. To my way of thinking if you can't build a wood mockup of a frame or a fork design then you probably can't build the same design in steel to begin with so in some ways it's a test of a persons skill set and a good way for them to test their own capabilities before they get into a project to far.
If you look through this site in detail you'll see dozens of examples of using mockups, some of them are rudimentary, made from cardboard, and some are pretty sophisticated being executed in wood but they all serve the same purpose and that is to perfect and verify a design prior to final fabrication. Let a word to wise be sufficient.
If you look through this site in detail you'll see dozens of examples of using mockups, some of them are rudimentary, made from cardboard, and some are pretty sophisticated being executed in wood but they all serve the same purpose and that is to perfect and verify a design prior to final fabrication. Let a word to wise be sufficient.