Sunday June 24, 2007.

Due to some extended time away from home It’s been quite some time since I’ve had anything to post here, but at last a bit more progress has been made.

The picture below is of the first chassis sub-assembly, basically fully welded together. This is a break with what is considered normal chassis fabrication technique which is to tack weld together as much of the frame as possible before fully welding it all up.

There’s a couple of reasons I’ve gone this way…
Firstly I’m confident in the CAD model I have of the chassis, if I make the thing properly to the drawing dimensions it will fit together at assembly.
Secondly after initially welding as much as I could with the assembly tacked to the build table some of the more awkward welds to do were made easier by being able to pick the thing up and turn it around (no upside down welding).
Thirdly thinking very very far down the road I wanted to know if this type of manufacturing technique can be used in a production environment, at the moment the chassis design consists of 5 or 6 these sub-assemblies with the rest being ‘stick’ built.

Whatever the reasons the technique worked out pretty well the finished sub-assembly is more than flat enough and is dimensionally good. My welding can still improve and some of the acute angled joints I’ve been unable to get the TIG torch into, I’ll seek some professional help on getting those finished I think at this stage.

This is also the smallest and probably the most complex of all of the sub-assemblies in the design.