Doorstepclimber new tracks
After our first attempt on the tracks we where faced with a new set of challenges. In order to produce the tracks we would have to make about 100 tracks, which would take ages to cast, and a lot of rubber to produce. Also we would need to find a way to connect them to each other in a secure way.
Therefore we where forced to look at alternative designs.
Alex came up with the idea of making a thinner track design with a lot more length. It would be impossible to make a track mould entirely cast at once, because you would need to make a mould with a 6 axes drill to reach all the details. Therefore we looked at ways to make tracks that could be welded or glued together.
Our new attempt would be focussed on making track parts approximately a third from the total length of the track.
Advantages for this design are:
- faster casting, because we only need to cast 3 pieces to produce an entire track
- lower cost, because we would use less material
- better locked for using welding / glueing
- less noise while driving, because of the reduced volume of material touching the ground
First thing to do was remodelling the track. I loaded a picture of the clay tracks that we made for the previous model into illustrator and copied the basic track shapes.
Then i imported these files in cinema 4d and used them to model the new track
I focussed on the middle part of the tire to make the track smaller and it wouldn't interfere with the outer parts.
Meanwhile Michiel also made a new model that was a bit closer to the actual tire.
We decided to have a try with Michiel's design first, because it would seem logical that this would be more stable and not roll of the tire that easily. So we loaded the design into the shop bot and made a very nice mall.
We did need to order a special set of cutters of 1/8"
After that we wanted to see if this would fit the tire, so we had to cast a prototype. We used a fast drying plastic for this purpose.
Strangly this cast didn't seem to fit on the tires a had on my chair, but somehow fitted perfect on the tires i had given Michiel to examine.
