Doorstep climber - New Tracks
Modelling, moulding and casting a rim out of aluminium proofed to be a lot of work, and also quit time consuming. But Michiel really liked the idea, so he decided to have a go at it.
Meanwhile Alex and me decided to have another go at the idea of making a rubber track that would fit my tire. But this time we would only use one side of the profile for traction. So I went back to the drawing board to model the new track
These 3d files where loaded into illustrator and converted to 2d objects. This way we could cut the profiles out on the shop-bot and use pockets instead of 3d cutting which resulted in a much shorter cutting time.
After having cut out the model in chemical wood we made the rubber mould. We used a pu rubber compound that was still pretty flexible. Also we hammered some nails in the cut out, so we would be able to align the two parts of the mould when we were going to start casting.
So after we had finished the mould, we could finally cast the first part of the track. Unfortunately I can’t find any pictures of the casting, but I do have some pictures of the end result, which wasn’t really what we hoped for.
Somehow in the process of entering the drawing into the shop-bot computer, we seemed to have mirrored a part of the drawing. Therefore the profile on the track doesn’t fit the profile of my tire. So my advice is to always double-check the cut job before initiating it.
Also the rubber was very hard to remove from the mould because the materials had to many similarity. And the third problem was that the rubber compound when mixed together was very thick and therefore very hard to pour into the mould. Because of that it wasn’t fully poured before the casting time was over, so the mould was only half filled.
