Post by ironband on Feb 15, 2019 1:16:35 GMT -5
As requested/ suggested on another topic, here are the photos of my youngest son's scout builds.
Tiger year, he was all about BB-8. We watched the Mark Rober video and did our best with my budget drill press, hand bent axles, and some horrible graphite I had left over from when my older son was in scouts. Needless to say we didn't place, but we had fun and he learned some basics. COG was around 1.5", lead weight, I know we tried to set steer but didn't do a very good job at it.
I joined Derbytalk a couple months later.
Wolf year, he found some penguin beads I had in my stash of jewelry making supplies and decided he wanted to go with a penguin theme. I decided we'd learn about jigs, so we got a pinewood pro blue jig (before they started making them with canted holes), and in the right of passage got the axle press and rail riding tool from derbyworx. We built a 4 ft. Tuning board and built a decent rail rider. Lead weighted, COM came in around 1.25 inch, and with 2.5 degree rears and a 1.5 degree front, we adjusted for around 2" of steer over 4 ft. I was only hoping to improve, but we wound up totally dominating, winning all 15 heats by a healthy margin.
At this point I decided to build and integrate an Arduino timer to our aging P2XL finish line. I also devised a Raspberry Pi instant replay system.
Bear year, he wanted a tech themed car. We switched to tungsten cylinders and went a little thinner. We still bent axles, but added bore prep to the mix. COM got a little more aggressive at about 7/8". We took 2nd to a car using a quick start front end in an extended battle where we traded wins depending on the opening speed of our manual gate. A bug in my software prevented us from recording race times, but the instant replay was a real hit. I'll link to a video of race highlights in a bit.
I joined pinewoodderbyonline at that point. I decided to host a parish-wide derby at our churches annual festival, and as a recruiting tool ran the track as a carnival game when we weren't racing. I made 10 lead weighted cars and let kids pick which ones they wanted to race. It was a lot of fun. I also designed and integrated a solenoid start gate to our track and fixed the timing bug so we could get actual race times. The stop section of the track was also redone to improve braking and reduce crashes (or so I thought)
This year was Webelos year one. My son went for a Smash Bros. theme. Still with tungsten cylinders, we went thinner this year. We opted to not file off the crimp marks on the axles, just knocking the burrs off from under the heads and polishing to 3000 grit and then brasso. Because of all the cars I had built for the carnival, we had quite a few wheels on hand. We built a runout gauge and selected the best wheels. I got a clear jig and used that for the rear wheels, but bent an axle steeply for the FDW and used a straight drill for it. The car felt great, like magic. I was super proud of the work my son had done on it. Unfortunately, I had to travel for business and had to miss the race.
We had the fastest car by a car length at the onset of the race and through 9 heats. Unfortunately the center lane's stop section either wasn't tightened down or was misaligned, causing it to throw cars like it was Randy Johnson. Without me there, the problem went unadressed and my son's car got thrown one too many times, reversing the alignment and causing the non dominant wheel to drag on the rail, increasing his average time by almost a whole tenth. The race chair denied his request to repair his car because... reasons, I guess (rules say a damaged car can get 15 minutes to repair, so... not sure what happened there) He hung on to take third. There will be a discussion at the recap meeting later this month.
So I'm now redesigning the stop section to try and idiotproof it. My son is already thinking about his car for next year, and since it will be his last we're pulling out all the stops. I expect we'll be adding aero to the mix, and I'm hoping to convince the committee that it is time to start allowing oil.
In addition to my son's cars, pictured are the cars I made for the carnival as well as my 24 hour cars I have entered into the adult race (won twice. Also shown are my workshop cars that I use to demo the effect of weight placement and axle alignment.
Anyway, glad to be here, and looking forward to learning even more.
André
Tiger year, he was all about BB-8. We watched the Mark Rober video and did our best with my budget drill press, hand bent axles, and some horrible graphite I had left over from when my older son was in scouts. Needless to say we didn't place, but we had fun and he learned some basics. COG was around 1.5", lead weight, I know we tried to set steer but didn't do a very good job at it.
I joined Derbytalk a couple months later.
Wolf year, he found some penguin beads I had in my stash of jewelry making supplies and decided he wanted to go with a penguin theme. I decided we'd learn about jigs, so we got a pinewood pro blue jig (before they started making them with canted holes), and in the right of passage got the axle press and rail riding tool from derbyworx. We built a 4 ft. Tuning board and built a decent rail rider. Lead weighted, COM came in around 1.25 inch, and with 2.5 degree rears and a 1.5 degree front, we adjusted for around 2" of steer over 4 ft. I was only hoping to improve, but we wound up totally dominating, winning all 15 heats by a healthy margin.
At this point I decided to build and integrate an Arduino timer to our aging P2XL finish line. I also devised a Raspberry Pi instant replay system.
Bear year, he wanted a tech themed car. We switched to tungsten cylinders and went a little thinner. We still bent axles, but added bore prep to the mix. COM got a little more aggressive at about 7/8". We took 2nd to a car using a quick start front end in an extended battle where we traded wins depending on the opening speed of our manual gate. A bug in my software prevented us from recording race times, but the instant replay was a real hit. I'll link to a video of race highlights in a bit.
I joined pinewoodderbyonline at that point. I decided to host a parish-wide derby at our churches annual festival, and as a recruiting tool ran the track as a carnival game when we weren't racing. I made 10 lead weighted cars and let kids pick which ones they wanted to race. It was a lot of fun. I also designed and integrated a solenoid start gate to our track and fixed the timing bug so we could get actual race times. The stop section of the track was also redone to improve braking and reduce crashes (or so I thought)
This year was Webelos year one. My son went for a Smash Bros. theme. Still with tungsten cylinders, we went thinner this year. We opted to not file off the crimp marks on the axles, just knocking the burrs off from under the heads and polishing to 3000 grit and then brasso. Because of all the cars I had built for the carnival, we had quite a few wheels on hand. We built a runout gauge and selected the best wheels. I got a clear jig and used that for the rear wheels, but bent an axle steeply for the FDW and used a straight drill for it. The car felt great, like magic. I was super proud of the work my son had done on it. Unfortunately, I had to travel for business and had to miss the race.
We had the fastest car by a car length at the onset of the race and through 9 heats. Unfortunately the center lane's stop section either wasn't tightened down or was misaligned, causing it to throw cars like it was Randy Johnson. Without me there, the problem went unadressed and my son's car got thrown one too many times, reversing the alignment and causing the non dominant wheel to drag on the rail, increasing his average time by almost a whole tenth. The race chair denied his request to repair his car because... reasons, I guess (rules say a damaged car can get 15 minutes to repair, so... not sure what happened there) He hung on to take third. There will be a discussion at the recap meeting later this month.
So I'm now redesigning the stop section to try and idiotproof it. My son is already thinking about his car for next year, and since it will be his last we're pulling out all the stops. I expect we'll be adding aero to the mix, and I'm hoping to convince the committee that it is time to start allowing oil.
In addition to my son's cars, pictured are the cars I made for the carnival as well as my 24 hour cars I have entered into the adult race (won twice. Also shown are my workshop cars that I use to demo the effect of weight placement and axle alignment.
Anyway, glad to be here, and looking forward to learning even more.
André
