chunkulator
Joined: 27 Jul 2016
Posts: 219
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Once I was pretty sure everything was going to fit, I sent it out for laser cutting in 3mm Hardox 450 (8mm for the snail cam) at Action Laser Cutting in Perth. It cost about $230 for the cutting and took about a week. I booked TNT to pick it up from Action and bring it to me in Sydney for about $80 overnight (Action don't do interstate shipping, but are heaps cheaper than anyone on the eastern seaboard):
The next job was to countersink a bunch of the holes in the frame and file off any burrs left from the laser cutting:
Then I set up to TIG weld it. It was a pain to weld because all the joints are internal. I ended up tacking the sidewalls together and then taking the walls off the base to get to the underside of the flange, then fitting it back onto the base and welding the bottom corners:
Here is the frame after welding. You can see I also put in M5 rivnuts for the lid before welding:
I welded up the outside and ground down the corners too:
Here is the arm being welded:
Later I discovered it had a tendancy to flip itself over backwards so I took the arm off and welded on some bits of SHS the day before the event:
I gave it a quick spray with Rust-o-leum flat black:
And the frame was good to go:
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