Makin' shit...again

As I stated in my previous post, I haven't had much time to devote to the stuff  I need to do right now but I did get some time to chip out some more pieces to the puzzle that is Sakura. Keep in mind, I still suck at taking sequential pictures. I am way more about making things than taking snaps.......

So here's the engine lightly setting in the frame with just the bottom bolts holding it in place.

Here's the beginnings of the rear motor plates under construction. Basically I traced the relevant shape on the material, pre-drilled the mounting holes and cut away what wasn't the part. The two cap screws you see are there to keep the pieces aligned whilst hacking away at them with the spinning death machine. If you've observed that the piece is canted in the vice you'd be correct. Notice the sharpy line though, it's vertical. I'll be using a rounding bit to create that nice curved end and it lets out on the vertical plain. So...there you have it....

Here I'm using a slitter the wrong way to cup off excess material at the bottom of the work piece. You can also see the same two cap screws from the above pic used to align the work piece in the machine.

Again, being bad at sequential picture taking.....we jump forward to the front engine plates. As you can see I've already got hem cut out and the over all shape and mounting holes finalized. What you're looking at here is the first relief cut to allow the stainless cap screws to inset a bit for a nice 3 dimensional effect once the final machining is done. That brass bit off to the side is a go-nogo that I turned up on the lath to assist in the process.

One Go-NoGo (GnG) ready for business!

Here you can see the GnG in-situ showing the purpose of the little groove. This allows me not only to align with pre-drilled holes but also to set depth repeatably since there are a few tool changes for each hole.

Here it is in position above the hole and really it's just a matter of jogging the hand wheels until it drops in without rubbing.

Here it is juuuust slipping in so now i know it's aligned for this hole. I cut the GnG to suit the collet size needed for the cutter so it's a simple matter of.......

Swapping the bit in and......

...hack-maim-destroy-kill! Ok, maybe not....how about we just cut that relief? Just plunge to depth checking against the groove gut in the GNG and Bob's yer uncle....

Here's the plate with four M10-1.25 stainless caps screws (tough to call these screws...these are BOLTS!) in place to show the inset. I've started these out of 1/2" 6061 aluminum plate because there's a good bit of surface milling to be done yet and they certainly don't need that much thickness.....

So what you're looking at here is a reference cut being made across each one. It'll be used to align the individual pieces to the machine for final surface milling.

Hardly glamorous, but needed for the build just the same......I had to fixture and cut the reliefs shown here so these four ginormous nuts will seat into the front motor plates just a wee bit. But.....you'll have to wait to see how until the next installment. hehe.....