I’ve been slacking with the build lately but finally got crackin with the mono tank/tail at the weekend.
Firstly, I dismantled and measured my cardboard mock-up to then recreate the parts in Solidworks. I then flattened and exported the parts into our (work) sheet metal software, where i then programmed the parts to be cut out of a sheet of 18 gauge stainless steel. I was originally going to use 2mm aluminium but the steel was half the price, our machinery at work is limited on the tooling i can use to punch 2mm ALI so I’d have had to cut all the parts manually! Plus I’m much better at welding steel :P
The design below also shows the battery location based on a 12-cell anti gravity unit and a channel to hide the wiring. What it doesn’t show are the tank baffles, which will be added later.
Below shows the freshly punched sheet
Next I went about bending the metal. The zero radius bends i put on using the bending machines at work, but unfortunately work didn’t have the tooling to bend the larger radius bends i needed so i had to improvise at home! Fortunately a had a couple of used disposable argon bottles that worked a treat
Unfortunately I only got as far as tacking one side of the tank before i ran out of Argon but am pretty pleased with how it looks so far...
