Wednesday, 10 July 2013

Tail Wheel Assembly for mini-RC 'Le Pou du Ciel', aka 'Flying Flea'

Earlier on, I thought of grooving an end of the vertical aluminium tubing to fit over the horizontal tubing and then to epoxy them together. That, and/or to strengthen it with 0.65mm PVC sheet.

Last night, on a whim, I started to fabricate the tail wheel assembly for a mini RC flying flea. I may not finish the model, but it is the process that I enjoy. To groove the end of the vertical aluminium tubing, I will have to file/sand, and I don't have a small round file and don't fancy wrapping sandpaper over the tubing.

Instead, I sawed one end of the vertical tubing, splayed and flatten the two resulting ends, and curl them to receive the horizontal tubing.

I used superglue to glue the two tubes together.
I marked out the 1/2" diameter wheels from 1/16" ply.
Drilled the centre holes with a 3mm drill bit held in a pin vise.
Added the bushings made from the same 3mm diameter aluminium tubing.
Sand and assemble them to the aluminium T-joint.
Then I realised that the 1/16" wire has a bit too much slop and replaced the wheel axle with a 2mm diameter carbon fibre rod and retained the wheels with what else but small snippets of 3mm aluminium tubing lengths. In this photo, you can see the superglue on the T-joint and an end of the wheel axle and retainer. This is easy.

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