Lots of planning time and thought went into those!!
It is scary when you have so much time in one piece and the next machining step or hole for some reason mostly human error is off and you have to throw away!! It makes you double tripple check before each process!!!
You just pray and measure after each step and hope hours or days of work is not lost not to mention the material!!!
I got lucky and did not screw these things up!!!
railroad bob wrote:Very nice to see your progress.
Couple things, drilling the corners to prevent stress cracks was new to me, but I think it's a damn good idea.
I'm not a machinist, haven't even played one on TV, but it sure seems reasonable to me.
I'm wondering what kind of bender you're using that you can get those long radius bends, like the backbone.
They look really good.
A great thread all around...
Sharp corners are a machinist worse enemy and should be avoided at all cost especially in high vibration enviroments!!!
It is easly fixed by rounding corners or drilling!! If you do ever have to repair a crack by welding in anything drill a hole in both ends of the crack before welding this will keep the crack/ break from coming back or extending farther across part!!!
I am using a cheap harbor fright tube roller!!
http://www.harborfreight.com/tubing-roller-99736.html
It comes with 1in, 1.5in, and 2in dies. I only need the 1in and 1.5 dies for the build because that is the tube I decided to use.
I had to drill the roller and shaft and install a thru bolt because only set screwed to shaft and spun!!
It sucked to do it and it was not the cranking the roller presure allthough that was a task!!
You can only take 1/4 to 1/2 a turn at a time on the roller presure bolt!!
Make sure to mark the tube!!
But if you want it bad enough you will do it and risk having to do over tell you get one that works!!
Even with running one direction with bends the stupid roller wants to twist the tube!!!! Not make it straight.
You have to unload once it started twisting reposition the rollers with mark on each roll.
Then turn the tube around and feed tube back the other way to take twist out.
Hours of doing this to get here straight.
Then lay on floor use straight edge and see if it was straight. If not put back in and use the way you new it wanted to twist against it and roll the other way tell she came back.
I am talking 1/16 here but pissed me off having to do that process!!!
If not checking it with mark could have been 1/2 out or more on all axis.It would be a spiraled curve!!
I had 6 to 8 hours in the backbone tube alone sweating the whole time!!!
The stand for her!!!
Nah you're cool Man.
