Testing the winch!!

Today we set off for the river to do try our winch for real! The weather was beautiful, temperature above 20 degrees and all was set for a great day! Check out the video :) Big thanks to birthday-boy Eivind who brought along wet suites. Water temp was friggin' cold, so we would have frozen to death without the suit :p

Of course we discovered some minor flaws; the spool axle started moving in its axial direction, causing the chain to come off. So we had to abort the testing and fix this until next time. Thankfully the weather forecast for the next week looks great, so there will be more time for testing(if we forget the fact that we have four exams coming up the next to weeks).


If you're in the Trondheim area and your interested in seeing the winch in action, maybe you'd like to buy one(?) - feel free to contact us!

Begining of the end.

Things are finally coming together! The past week has been relatively productive. All left to do now is assemble the wakeboard rope reel, assemble the transmission/clutch system and seal the welds! Not bad. If all goes to plan we'll be wakeboarding in no time. In theory. "Mad respecta" to Valgrinda workshop for hooking us up with CNC job on the wakboard reel!

Heavy duty rollers bolted onto a rail for adjustability.

Most of the parts point welded together. Hopefullt next week we can seal the welds. Just gotta get the perfect position - where ever that is.

Measuring the fuel cap?!? Strike a pose. Dont ask why there is GT Bicycles banner in the background.

Terje welding on the engine base plate.

5-axis CNC milling machine doing the dirty work. Making the wakeboard rope reel walls. Designed on Autodesk Inventor. Imported to Gibbs and finally converted to 1437 lines of orders for the milling machine to process. Took about 1.5 hours for each of the side walls to be made once the programming was finished which took about 45 minutes.

Gibbs - Program used to make the tool paths for the mill.

Shredding away.

Done with the milling.


Voila! Straight out of the milling machine.

Our "connect" Vegard monitoring the mill.

Long time, No update

Well,
been a while since last update, but A LOT has happened! First of all, the reason for the long absence is because me and Mats(and the rest of our class) went to Brazil for a three week vacation/excursion.
So we came home and this week things are finally getting finished(hopefully tomorrow)!


Last week and this week we have been finalizing the last parts and solving the last problems (Insha'allah). Tomorrow we're getting the spool walls cnc'ed and the shoulder screws are arriving by mail. Then there will be some assembly and we're ready for testing.
I went running past the Nidelva river downtown this morning and the water was glass :D Water is probably just above freezing point, but whatever - aren't we supposed to be vikings?

Wednesday

Welding the ends shut.

Hydraulic press we used to make the new key holes.

Terje lub'ing up and drilling.

Friday's work: Shaft extension (version 2), keying and preliminary frame production!

CAD design of the winch - and our "banner".

Very successful day @ the workshop!
First off we managed to create new key "holes" on the transmission parts that fit on the drive shaft. (Previously: transmission parts were made for 3/4" shafts and not 20mm shafts - in the process of modding them to 20mm we had to sacrifice the original key tooth). Now with the mod'ed transmission parts we had to create a 2.5x5mm "trench" so that a key (square long rod) could be used to connect the shaft to the transmission parts. Great success! We basically used a 5 mm thick long metal piece with teeth on one side and forced it through the hole with a hydraulic press. (Pictures to come). The teeth would cut away a perfect 5 mm thick path for the keys to fit in.

Secondly we mastered out a new design for the shaft extension:
As mentioned earlier the first engine shaft extension was not successful. The steel rod used was not machined precise enough for our use. It was "oval" creating strong vibrational forces due to the off-center nature. However we now machined our own 20mm shaft extension on the lathe. Started off with a 25 mm steel rod and worked our way down to 20.00 mm. Originally we created M8 threads on each side of the extension; one side to fasten it to the original shaft (with a short threaded rod) and the other to hold the transmission parts in place. This time however, to improve, instead of creating bolt thread holes on each side, we decided to drill straight through the shaft extension and use a center bolt, going straight through the extension, to hold it in place. This being better because the center bolt will lie perfectly against the extension piece therefore having better radial support. It also eliminates the problem of off-axis nature we saw with the previous extension. Problem solved - inshallah.

Those were they main two features of the day - but we also started constructing the frame. We got to test out the welding equipment which was awesome! Built the base of the frame and added the plate where the engine is going to be placed.

What a day! hehe (everything is in relative context!!)

First weld of the project!

Base part of the winch frame finished.

Adding the base attactment plate for the engine.

Banana, sandwhich and pepsi.

What works in theory works in practice?

See anything wrong? Neither did we initially - but Murphy's law caugth up with us! This picture shows how the engine drive shaft is too short to fit the clutch. Another clutch part up is supposed to be attached, but the shaft is already full!
How to solve this - make an extension. Attempt no.1 was a fail, we didn't do the machining precise enough - causing resignation and a hope for help from the workshop staff. The gave us some tips, so lets hope we'll get it right the next couple of days...

Spool axles were machined without trouble - so all in all a productive day!

First days in the shop

Here are some pictures of the first days in the workshop:

^^Unpacking the 6.5 HP 200cc 4-stroke Honda wannabe.

^^Terje "retrofitting" the TAV2 (clutch/variable gear) from 3/4" to 20mm. Goddamnit why cant the world just use one measuring system!! (Metric!)