CarBEN EV5 Full Sized Prototype Construction - 5 Seat Electric Car From Scratch

[HyperMileQC]

Very nice shelter! How long did it take to build it?

[NeilBlanchard]

I built all in one day, by myself.

On the CFD model - I realized I need to add lens on the headlights. I'm hoping that a more detailed and high resolution test shows more - and maybe gives an estimate of the Cd, too.

[NeilBlanchard]

Okay, I've been gluing 6 or 8 inches a day, and now I only have 11 inches left to glue! Three 2 inch layers are all cut and ready to go, and the five 1 inch thick section at the very back of the car still need to be cut. The end of major gluing is within sight!

I'll upload pictures when I can -- I'm running Falcon CFD at the moment and my computer is a little sluggish.

[Ang84Indy]

I can't wait to see it all in one piece, sitting horizontal !

[NeilBlanchard]

Of course I still have to glue the hatch door and the wheels skirts, too -- and then the Great Blue Dust Storm (aka shaping the foam) has to happen. I kinda' need to move the chassis inside the garage to do that -- which will involve moving out the *stuff* inside the garage and rigging up lights, etc. I think I need a larger (and quieter) shop vacuum.

[cyclist916]

Wow, it's actually happening! I will be following the progress, good luck!

[NeilBlanchard]

Okay, today was decidedly mixed -- I cut the last two sheets of foam! Woohhoo!! BUT, the toothed timing belt on the X-axis (which has the big job of moving the entire sheet of foam along the 8' length) started to tighten up, and then to "climb" off the side of the pulleys on the main rollers... It stretched and frayed, but it did not break, at least. What it did do though was skip a number of steps, which caused several parts to be cut incorrectly and one part to be totally messed up. :-(

I'll try to cut that one by hand (I have the mirror piece to trace) and I'll try to repair the 3 or 4 damaged pieces. That and my computer was pausing, which made me catch my breath every time. It did not go smoothly... Worst case, I buy a replacement belt and cut that one sheet again.

I may have caused this by not vacuuming out the dust, and it may have packed itself on the pulley causing it to over tighten. Or maybe the idler bearings came loose and then got out of alignment? I'll look at it as soon as I can.

Pictures from yesterday:


Here are the stacks of the last three 2" layers ready to be glued (portions of the rear wheels are on the right). There are five 1" layers then to be glued (because the tapers are much more abrupt). Those are on the 2 sheets I (tried to) cut today.


Here is (about) the 10th large bag of broken up scraps sitting next to enough foam sheet leftovers to fill an 11th:

I snap this all into 1-2" pieces so it fits more into each bag, and luckily they can be put out with the regular trash pick up; costing just $2/bag. Before I got into this process, I thought I would have to truck things away and pay a lot more than that.

I will likely finish the gluing on the main chassis over the weekend. Then the hatch door and the wheel skirts will need to be glued. And then the shaping begins... :-)

[Weather Spotter]

What about taking a propane torch and warming but not burning the foam to reduce its size?

[freebeard]

Put two insulators and a piece of Ni-Chrome wire in a coping saw frame and run a comfortable length of wire off the handle to the transformer from a model train set and you have a portable hot-wire tool. (I will produce a picture if you can prompt me past my inherent sloth)

Carve the first 60% and sand the last 40%.

[NeilBlanchard]

I glued another 8" today -- the rear door opening has been started, and the is only another 3" to go, and then the bumper and the overhang of the hatch door.

I'm going to repair the Phlatprinter 3's X-axis belt and buy another sheet of foam (it's less than $12) and cut another copy of the sheet. To many hassles to try and do all that hand cutting.

Only the portions that have a lot of taper have very much foam to remove. Most of the car have just ~1/8" to come off -- the random orbital sander with 50 grit or 80 grit pads with make fast work of that; and it has its own dust bag or you can use a shop vacuum attached to it to collect most of the dust. The pads have 8 holes that suck the dust right from the surface, and it works pretty well, really.