98 replies to this topic

[SlotsNZ]

My first routed track was simple. 2 sheets of MDF, one flat surface, 3 parallel lines.
This I can do . . I know, I did it. But this sucker is a wee bit more of a challenge.

Being born with 3 left feet and one arm, and fingers designed for keyboards not tools, I could be here a while - and "photoshopping" the result so no one knows how it really turns out

Anyway, here's my 2nd attempt at a routed track, after practicing on the fitst, and a further 3 months of "researching" ideas from Knoath, Davnic, Phoeno and numerous other parties.

I am using the rotating leg idea, with a lightweight frame, so I can lift and lower it by myself - I hope.
Dimensions are 4,550 x 2,100, the biggest I can fit along the garage wall.

Pics to follow, need to reboot.

[Sports Racer]

How long does it take you to reboot?

Oh, sorry, didn't know it was a sheep sh*gging term. Take your time.

(We don't want any pictures of the sheep)

[SlotsNZ]

Glad to see how excited you are. If you're really nice I might let you send your proxy entries over later for our newbies to practice with

Just ran out of time actually Paul.

Drove Beejays one a few laps at the club tonight after dinner. That was what happened, just ran out of time, had to go and pick Alan and Jude up to come over home for dinner. Just dropped them back to their motor home a couple of minutes ago.

Anyways, here's the beginnings.

Lightweight frame, to keep the weight managable for me to lift.
Not sure what you call this interlocking wood thing, but that's what I did.
Cut all the runners for each direction as a group, to make life easier.



Put them together like a jigsaw, E & OE! I made a couple of errors, but nothing I couldn't fix with a brace, a few screws and some extra white glue.
Whole thing is screwed and glued together with double ups of timber where the 4 MDF sheets will butt edge to edge.





Then I fitted the legs and braces.


The cutout ovals in the legs, and having the legs stop 200mm from what will be the front of the track acheives a few things.
1) Keeps weight down
2) moves balance centre of leg weight towards the back of the track, to shift the "tipping point" towards the rear
3) Having legs recessed back from the front will avoid having people inadvertantly clip them with their feet as they move about.

Then on to the marking out. Last time I just roughly marked and cut one lane, then used a pin guide to ciut the other 2. That resulted in some unforseen tightness in one lane at a certain point, so this time I forced myself to be a bit more patient, and marked out the whole circuit including run-offs, with the idea that I will have a direction flip switch for each lane, and be able to run it both directions.



At one end there are two loops/u-turns. I cut two sheets of MDF in a sort of zig-zag shape right hand side, so that all the track at each side of that end, would be within a sheet, rather than crossing over to the other one. Just made it easier to keep the surface flat and smooth, less joins to hold even.

Edited by SlotsNZ, 28 November 2007 - 06:29 PM.

[knoath]

Hey Slots, looking good mate!
I hope you don't follow my work too closely... it's my first time too!
Can we get a track plan up?
What's the smallest radius?
Pics mate....good stuff.

[SlotsNZ]

Hey Knoath,

the layout lines don't show up too good on picture, so here's the layout as I originally did it using plastic track design software. I added an "R5" curve to the Ninco library in SlotMan, so I could create a 360mm wide (4 lane) track path, which is about the same width as the 3 lane wood path. I have 100mm lane centres except the squeeze at around 50mm in the hairpin which is top right, (ie, 100mm between the 2 outer lanes), for which the logic is giving centre lane the most grief, which might even up lap times, or at least make them more interesting and less predictable.

Main difference in the actual wood cut is that the underpass is moving outwards/upwards as it runs to the right, getting closer to the track edge, and with that the esses are a little different. It also means that the underpass is pretty much the middle of a straight.



Tightest curve is the hairpin squeeze. Inside lane is 200mm radius 400mm diameter, middle is 500mm, outside is 600mm.
Wiidest curve is the outer one at left.
Curve diameters there are
1,450mm, 1,650mm and 1,850mm for the outside lane, so it will be possible to carry some nice speed around there.
I left most of the curves as fixed radius, with my logic being, that the people using it will do so just occasionally, or be not expert drivers, so I wanted to make it easier to learn and less technical, than I would have if the same guys were to be racing on it week in and week out.

Everything is a compromise.

Edited by SlotsNZ, 29 November 2007 - 10:34 AM.

[Davnic74]

SlotsNZ, on Nov 28 2007, 01:50 PM, said:

Dimensions are 4,550 x 2,100, the biggest I can fit along the garage wall.

Pics to follow, need to reboot.

Looking good Slots, dont worry most of us have the same prob with limited garage space.
How thick are the roll up legs? remembering there will be a bit off weight once completed.

[SlotsNZ]

Gidday Davnic
two legs are 20mm MDF, remaining one is 20mm chipboard - that worries me a bit, but if it starts to flake, I can easily template another of of it. since cutting the legs, I picked up another dozen mixed sheets from my "supply channel"

Among them a near perfect white laminate sheet, and likewise a native woodgrain one. Last one may be turned into a couple of rollaway cabinets for slots, tools etc.

I'm fortunate, I only have to buy the 9mm tops, anything else I get as free ex "packers" I am keeping the weight down. I figure the frame weighs only 15kg - all kiln dried pine 65 x 20mm. The legs weigh about 7kg each, and the top sheets together weigh about 35kg. That's only 80 odd kg apart from the supports for the overbridge, braid, wiring, scenics etc, so I am hoping to bring the whole thing in at about 100kg, with weight balance 55/45 towards the rear.

In effect, I hope to only need to lift 25kg to tip it up for storage, and if needed, I can put a 10kg counterbalance weight on the back, that comes off when in use to make the track stable, but is re-attached when I am rready to flip the thing back up against the wall.

My only concern with the lightweight construction is track flex causing things to move in ways they shouldn't. I'll have to cross that bridge when i come to it, but with my dodgy back, and the type of house construction here limiting use of wires and pulleys, I had limited choices.

My portable winch - AKA "honey, can you give me a hand in the garage for a sec." is um . . . of dubious reliability comes with an even lower "max load capacity" than me, and is often AWOL on retail rampages.

Edited by SlotsNZ, 29 November 2007 - 10:55 AM.

[knoath]

^^^ he he he... we all know about those rampages, 'eh?^^^

The design is great Slots! Simple, yet interesting.
Those large constant radius corners are deceiving mate, let me tell you.
Half way round you think, "yeah, get on it now", but as it's still a constant, you can't really 'accelerate' untill you're out of there!
Big slides coming your way buddy!!! Enjoy!

I have 2, 200mm radius corners on my track, and they certainly make you pull up after a straight... this is gunna be great to watch come to life mate... I like the design.
What will the track surface be?

Cheers,
Dick

[Sports Racer]

Easy to see this isn't your first track. Lots of great ideas in the construction. Looks good too.

Cheers

Paul

[SlotsNZ]

Gidday guys

Sports, no, it's my 2nd. That comes just before the 3rd . . and the 4th . . . I sense I may be digging a grand canyon worth of projects.

Knoath, not 100% decided, but will probably go with what I did last time. Lay down a grey acrylic (waterbase) paint, then put Cabot's Floor Clear waterbased clear coat over the top. The result is pretty impervious to most solvents, semi-gloss, pretty smooth. Doesn't do anything to the car paint when you mate flips your Barchetta or Bruce McLaren M8B Vanquish.

Once I realised I needed to keep it dust free, this surface on my 1st track works for any kind of silicone tyre, MJK, Kelmac, Ortmann, almost good enough for the V8 Touring stock tyres. Okay for Ninco shore 25, or ribbed tyres, Spirit stock, works for pretty mcuh all the classics (narrow tyre profile helps hold them), but just lousy for Ninco stock slick tyre, Fly stock, VMG or SCX stock tyre.

I can "cure" those with a tyre treatment anyway if needed. eg, WD40, CRC556, or Ninco tyre oil ( (I picked up a lifetime supply at 50 cents a bottle from an old importer who was selling off a bunch of old Ninco and SCX stuff.)

Hee hee, did I mention the Rally Loop kits at AUD20 each, the complete Chronos rally set for $45, track packets 2 for $5 motors 50 cents each and so on.
Spent about $350 and I had half a cubic metre of stuff jammed in both seats of my car. I can put NC-2 and solid axle in VMG cars now if needed for just a few bucks.

I reckon I can build a 50 metre plastic track, border it, and have leftovers now if I feel like it. . . just need more space . . . . . . . moe space . . . . need a basement like NotHO, or a shed like that Phillip Island track.

[Rob]

Hey SlotsNZ,
Great to see you are building another track, as a suggestion for the legs are you able to screw some vertical lengths of timber to the outside of each leg so that once the table is in its correct position they take the bulk of the load not the MDF / chipboard? Im looking forward to watching you build this.

Edited by Rob, 29 November 2007 - 04:47 PM.

[SlotsNZ]

Heyas,

Rob, good idea, but doubt I'll need to do it,as there should only be 35kg per leg, I;m more worried about durability of the hinges.

Finally got back onto the track while the missus is away for the weekend.
Bit of update, I made up a thing they tell me is called a trammel or trammal, or camel, or something. I just thought it was a cunning plan for cutting constant radius curves.

Looks like this



and I used it like this



and the result was surprisingly good, apart from a wee bit of "operator error" that will need filling.

Cut all the constant radius curves with it, and then cut the straights. Some of the straights stop short of the main curve, so that I can create a very gentle radiusing (is that a word), as a transition from one to the other.





For the odd joining bits,and the curves hat aren't constant radius, I planned to use my trusty hose of a thousand nails lke last time, but due to summer heat it was soft, and the roughter just dug into it, and the cuts turned to custard.

In the end I made my 3 zillionth trip to the hardware store, and bought a strip of aluminium, 20 mm high 1.6mm thick, 1.8 metres long and glued wood blocks on one side of it, so I could screw down to the track.
The cheap expoy I used didn't work very well, so back to the hardware store AGAIN for some better stuff, that cost me another day. @^%@&$%

Then I found the wood blocks at 180mm centres were too far apart, and the strip would flex when the router ran between the blocks. This meant more filling and sanding, and more muttering. In the end, I just banged in a 50mm brad half way between each block, and that made it work fine. You can see it at the top of the picture above, where it is set up to cut the esses leading into/out of the squeeze hairpin.

Edited by SlotsNZ, 01 December 2007 - 09:05 PM.

[slots]

Hey NZ, you just gave me a good idea. I did some special trims for a job the company was doing that are 12 x 25 mm aluminium angle with a 3 mm wall. 60 or so saw cuts later per strip and we had flexible angle 3.5 metres long that we could screw down. If I change to 70 or so cuts it's gonna be even more flexible so I can do hairpins. Thanks.

[SlotsNZ]

Put the side-cut bit into the router that I bought from the guy to cut the side indents for the braid - did I mention I am braiding it? It has a centre pin, which is 1/8th inch, that acts as a guide. I roted using a 3.2mm bit (generous 1/8th) instead of 3mm like last time, so that I could make use of this special bit for the braid depressions.

Fiddled a bit to get the depth right, then made a test cut, to see how well it would track, and how easy it would be to actually drive.
Wnet so wellI cut a bit more, and a bit more. An hour later the whole track was done. I could not believe how easy cutting side slots for braid would be with it. One of my major concerns gone in an hour.
Overall track


Wide end


Top turn ______________________________________________________Hairpin
_____________________________________________________________ stuffups clearly visible aswhite lines - plaster filled. I also used builders bog, in places where there would be direct slots contact. Goes hard in an hourm and can be re-routed within 2 hours. The 2 blade 1/8th bit cut it smooth as glass.



The braid sits nicely just below the surface. I went around the whole track and lightly sanded the edge of the side cuts to "break the edge" of the depression and create a rounded edge which should enable paint to adhere easier down into the depression, and also be smoother for cars, and less likely to "chip" later.

Edited by SlotsNZ, 03 December 2007 - 06:57 PM.

[Eno the Wonderdog]

SlotsNZ, on Dec 3 2007, 07:18 PM, said:

Mate - you've really cocked up - I thought I'd seen wrong but knowing what I know now there's a HUGE problem here.

Somehow you forgot that a bridge has an uppy bit and a downy bit with a going over the top bit in the middle...

[slots]

Eno the Wonderdog, on Dec 3 2007, 08:22 PM, said:

SlotsNZ, on Dec 3 2007, 07:18 PM, said:

Mate - you've really cocked up - I thought I'd seen wrong but knowing what I know now there's a HUGE problem here.

Somehow you forgot that a bridge has an uppy bit and a downy bit with a going over the top bit in the middle...

And a lack of brainy bit at Eno's!

NZ, as an idea, I would start the underpass section from the join in the boards to eliminate one more join in the track.

Edited by slots, 04 December 2007 - 05:28 PM.

[grego]

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Now if you will watch all the Allo allo series i am sure ye gonna come up with a reasonable explanation for this one.

grego


p.s. ...and i most definitifely will collect my 50 bucks. C'mon guys i won that bet fair and square.....

Edited by grego, 04 December 2007 - 07:31 PM.

[Eno the Wonderdog]

Seemed a reasonable line..

[Chewycat]

Have you started your allo allo collection (sorry fella's am having serious Get This withdrawal symptoms)

[sax0607]

@ chewycat
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