Thanks Mark -- I'll oil the working end better today.

I cut 8 sheets of foam yesterday, putting the the total up to 18; with 75 left to go! I'm going to cut th remaining 6 sheets (from my first buy) today, and then start gluing! I'll buy another 24 sheets next week, after I get paid.

 

I've now cut 22 sheets and begun to glue things together. I've stacked and glued the first foot of the front! Here are pictures:

 

This is looking AWESOME Neil. Good work keep it up

 

Here's some picture of today's progress:



I added 6 more layers; minus two pieces that I have not cut yet. This happened because I was trying to pack pieces as efficiently as possible, and two pieces are on a sheet that is 7 ahead in the sequence... I'll buy more foam as soon as I can (I'm waiting to be paid) and I'll cut that far and then keep gluing. In the meantime, I need to help my brother finish rebuilding his bulkhead AND there is the small matter of emptying out my little 1 car garage to make space to build more that 3 feet of CarBEN -- otherwise it will be trapped on my screen porch...

The third picture is taken with the main piece "nose down" so the the additional pieces are on top and the dowel rods can be left in.

I also put together the pieces of the hood so far, but the final assembly of that will have to wait until the hood opening gets fully formed on the car. The hood doesn't have alignment pins, so it has to be done by fitting it. Next time I'll put in the alignment pin holes.

The main piece I've glued together is amazingly light and strong -- it will get significantly lighter after the shaping is done, though it will probably be less rigid. I think it weighs less than 8 pounds? I'll try to weight it tomorrow, as will as get a better picture. The fiberglass will obviously add both weight and strength.

This is going to be a lot of fun!

 

I'm using Titebond III which is a waterproof wood glue.

 

The steps are sized so that I will be shaving them all off to get a smooth surface. So it is the root of the steps that will get "connected". That much filler would be heavy and expensive.

I'll be using Stanley SurForm tools of various sizes to do the initial rough shaping (and I probably will need to attach a vacuum hose to suck up the dust!) and then sand paper.

 

I've started to do the rough shaping of the right side of the nose. The section is now 20" deep:



I have all four variants of the Stanley SurForm tools and they all are useful. The long ones are helpful on the large convex surfaces, and the palm size one is for more "precision" and the smallest convex one helps a lot when the car surface is concave.

Monday I borrow my brother's Tacoma and buy another 24 sheets of foam!

 

Yesterday I cut 10 more sheets; bringing the total to 32, which is 1/3rd the way through! And there is some open space in my garage; though more clearing needs to be done.

 

I'm continuing to glue up the foam core of my CarBEN EV5 (open source 5 seat electric car). This first photo shows a mistake -- can you spot the omission?


Here's the hand-cut fix on the left side:


The thin struts are there temporarily to hold the beginning of the firewall in position:


The first 2 feet of the front:


With the hood in place:


I also had not exported the latest version of the F19 sheet, so I was missing a piece (outlined in red marker) that I was able to trace from the mirror piece and cut by hand:


I've continued on the shaping progress (SurForms are the best tools for rough shaping) and I'm starting the lapped hood opening edge:


This is now too big to fit into my car... I need to put a work table in my garage!

 

I've now cut 8 more sheets. And I ran into a new problem (for me anyway): the USB connection got dropped spontaneously part way through the 5th sheet, and it seems that the USB port on my ancient laptop may be failing. Two of the four USB ports have already failed completely, and now it seems that one of the remaining two is not good for the driver board. I can use it for the extended keyboard, thankfully.

 

Thanks Mark,

I meant to ask if it was relatively easy to "jump" forward in a g-code file to a specific step? When the cutting stopped, the only thing that got it reconnected was to unplug the USB and plug it in again -- which resets the g-code to the beginning.

In the first instance I was able to just let the cutter move through the already cut slots; but the second time, I pulled the sheet out, and let it play through up to just before the point where it stopped, reinsert the sheet and get it positioned correctly and then continue the routine.

 

I now have a 24" deep piece and a 20" deep piece -- they are held together with four 1/2" dowel rods for the moment. I have to nearly finish the shaping inside the motor bay while it is accessible from the back before I glue these together.



Here is the front 44" resting on the ground -- looking kinda' like the CarBEN EV5 Ranch?



Okay, now in the proper orientation:



As a reminder, here is the latest animated video of the SketchUp model: