Have you welded before? From what I understand, stainless needs to be TIG welded, which is a bit of an art form in itself…
This project is crazy!
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I did some MIG welding, nothing too crazy. Did a few car panels, for example a hole in the floor in my mazda 3 (rip), 1/3 of the curb on one side and two wheel arches completely replaced with a borrowed welder.
With the setup that I bought about an year ago I welded together some threaded rods for a university project without gas and once grinded off the top it actually looked okay.
Here’s my welder, and I bought some 82% argon 18% co2 gas for it for a project I didn’t end up making, so I’d be using that gas.
I know it’s not ideal for stainless but from what I could gather reading up on it, it should be doable. I’ll need to get some 308 welding wire to weld stainless.
I’m considering it quite a bit to get rid of the Audi I bought about two weeks ago though, and if I get rid of it I might buy a rusty shitbox, I just want a working engine… Would be a good practice opportunity for welding too depending on what I found… Seems like the issue with the Audi is the oil pump, but to change it I need to lower the subframe to be able to lower the oil pan, and I don’t have a place where I can do it. Definitely not doing that in the parking lot. I much rather weld body panels than work on engines.
Haha yep.
In my experience with welding, you can never get enough practice 
I’ve probably got over 100hrs welding experience and i still completely suck at it
Good luck!!!
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If I wasn’t so worried about being responsible for other ppl’s stuff I could really be helpful. I’m getting 3mm 304 lasercut and have before, have access to a modular jaw bending brake and know someone who can weld stainless pretty well.
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Really appreciate the tip, I’ll check out their other videos as well! This wave bending looks cool, I’ll look into it more and might do it this way, and then weld it for strength.
The reason why I want to keep the tower in the same piece is that I don’t want these edges to be a purely welded connection, and adding space for bolts would require lengthening the wheelbase which is already pretty long.
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Just received everything for the LED cone sideproject.
I think I might have overshot the brightness a bit with 0.2 W LEDs.
The plan is to wire a single liion cell to each lighting module, use the TP4056 charge and discharge modules for charging, I need to replace that tinyyyy discharge protection chip on each one. The chip that comes with it shuts off at 2.5V, the FS312F ones cut off a little above 3V if i remember correctly. Then the voltage goes through the switch into the boost converter which steps it up to 5V. Then that 5V goes into these super small LED modules.
I would ideally assemble design and 3d print a housing for all the electronics. I’ll probably make 5 within a reasonable timeframe just to be able to practice a little T race in the night, then I’ll finish up the rest (the remaining 35… Yikes) after esk8con.
I’ll also start the other side project which is torque vectoring. Just received the magnetic sensor and the microcontroller for it. The final magnets are still in the mail but I’ll be start to play with some magnets I have over the weekend hopefully, just to see if the sensor I bought can be used to for this purpose at all.
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Cone lights are a fun problem that we don’t often have in Esk8- scale. Easy to build one, much harder to make a bunch. Have to come up with a design that’s cheap and quick to build, while also being durable isn’t easy. It’s a fun challenge 
I think the time investment to make a single, custom PCB design would pay dividends
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For the immediate future i just want something to do T-race with though thats relatively low effort on my brain cells, and I don’t mind sniffing fumes for a weekend. Funnily enough ordering parts for 5 vs 40 was like a 10$ difference though, so I might as well just build out all 40. Coincidentally I need 35 to setup the Aussie’s standard track, and my friend wants to do something that’s not T-race… So definitely going to try and set that up eventually but we can only do that at night.
If I ever need more or need to remake them, then I’d probably take a few days to throw together a PCB for this, it actually wouldn’t be too complicated.
I don’t know if your torque vectoring will be done for esk8con, but assuming that I can get usable readings for truck angle (which might not be the case) I’m aiming for completion just in time for esk8con 
Having the power steering from torque vectoring would mean that I could run my stiffer setup without compromising the turns. Which might be what I want to run due to the length of the straight anyways, but I’m fearing it might make the turns more effort than I would like.
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Hell yeah! Same. Excited to compare and contrast systems
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designed up a small case to hold the leds and all the electronics, about 40g each, printing the first one right now. I’ll probably lasercut the top at work instead of printing it but we’ll see
about time I make these so that I can maybe still practice a bit before esk8con…
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First module is done *
(I didn’t swap the ic so overdischarge protection is 2.5v)
It’s gonna work really nice though! Gotta print 4 more of these cases tomorrow!
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I’m in the same boat, wanting an “enclosure” only to protect my motor harnesses. I’m going super-lazy with P-clips threaded into the enclosure holes, but considered using a flat piece of 2-3mm textured ABS as a simple cover. The gasket on the Flux came pre-installed (glued-on), will provide just enough room for the wires and bullets laid flat. I’ve used 1/16in PETE before, which can be cut with scissors, punched with a paper hole punch. It’s tough as nails… Same stuff clear plastic soda bottles are made of. I’d love a nicely molded piece too, know my limitations.
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I’m not reading the whole thread (now) but am SO impressed with this deck design! You intending that the CF plates stiffen the sheet metal structure? Brilliant. A super-stiff deck with NO 3D machined parts… All flat 2D cutting and boring!
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The flat piece is a much smarter choice. It really is hard to bend one of these with just a simple heatgun! And it will more or less take shape even if it isn’t prebent.
Those plates on the side of the towers will also be cut from stainless steel, yeah hoping for extra stiffness and strength. I want to run the design through finite element analysis but I didn’t really have the time to play with it yet, and I’m not very experienced with FEA 
it’s definitely a skill I want to learn though
Finally the weather is starting to be usable from time to time, I’m quite rusty at the moment though, but I’m back on the track.
I wanna remeasure the track, as the markings are quite faded, so not 100% sure on the accuracy of these times
Toeside 13.72 from last session
And heelside 14.97 from todays session.
Been playing with an idea today that I had in my mind for a while. After I changed out the bent washer in my rear truck, I just couldn’t get the feel of the dual chubby rear setup right. It just felt off. Kinda like if I moved from flat washers to cup washers, same feeling, and I couldn’t find out what happened there until now.
So I 3d printed a cone spacer that goes between the bushing and the washer.
There were some “issues” with assembly, namely that I still ran doubled up washers boardside and adding this roadside to my thick washer meant that I needed a fairly shallow cone angle to be able to thread on the nut. It transformed the ride feel. The double chubby setup just came alive. This is the feeling that I’ve been missing since I changed out that washer, but I didn’t realize what caused the loss of that feeling until now. Now I’ve got a center that’s not quite but nearly as stiff as double chubbies, without having the restriction of double chubbies on the edge of lean.
Turns out the bent washer was not a bug, but feature. I kinda want to get a couple shapes machined from steel and experiment… Or perhaps also considering 3d printed steel if thats cheaper. Different angle cones, perhaps also experiment with ones where the sides are not straight… The washers are the things that have the single biggest impact on ride feel, yet so often they are neglected. I think there’s a huge unexplored potential here.
I love how the setup feels now on 93/93 front wfb barrels and 95/95 rear chubbies with one of them having the “cone” washer. I do think I could benefit from a bit more cone angle though still. Considering just putting that bent washer back in for now.
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Woah. Revolutionary. 
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This is wild.
Im super curious how that will affect the ride.
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Running these cone washers, I have most of the stability that the hard chubbies give in the center, but as I get deeper into the lean, they don’t really tighten up like they would normally on just flat washers. This is because the bushing has more space to deform into.
Worth noting that I’m using a completely unsupportive front in all cases, 93/93 wfb barrel.
Flat washers with 95/95 chubby/barrel on the rear felt nice on short track, but lacked support for turns at faster speeds because of less material, and had a bit looser center too.
Running 95/95 chubby/chubby on flat washers to me feels too hard to turn tight, as deep into the lean it supports me too much. But stability and center is phenomenal.
Changing to 95/95 chubby/chubby on the cone washers, now I get most of the turn of the 95/95 chubby/barrel flat washer combo, while also getting most of the stability of the 95/95 chubby/chubby flat washer combo. Now I get like 75% of the stability of the more stable setup and 75% of the turn of the more turny setup. This can of course be tweaked with the exact shape of the washer, which just adds another layer of complexity. It’s another layer that allows tweaking straight line stability and support in turns separately.
I so wish I had access to a cnc lathe…
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I think we have a rider in our group who owns a machine shop.
I’ll ask!
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