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Chatterbox / Re: Another RC model side project
« Last post by crueby on April 23, 2024, 11:57:30 PM »I'd think PET would hold up better to abrasives, but either material should take the forces (weight of payload plus the overburden during scooping) at that scale (I'm imagining a pile of wet sand to work on, not the wife's cache of raw diamonds and assorted carbide tooling shards).Thats the way I was thinking too. No diamond digging, though the elves may use it on thier swarf pile, to get more in the truck to sell for beer money!
Fun and easy to find materials to learn digging in will include sand, small gravel (fish tank? Chick grit?) Or even fresh clean kitty litter. I have some bags of chick grit left over from train layout making. For those who never got near a farm, chick grit is a clean fine gravel used to give baby chickens something to swallow for thier gullet digestive system. Same reason you see sparrows pecking at and swallowing small stone bits around driveways. Perfect size for G1 rail ballast.
After the suggestion the other day about that circuit board place that also does metal printing and cnc, I did more digging, pun intended, into similar places. After lots of looking around and getting quotes, plus seeing what it would take to fabricate those parts myself, I wound up ordering a bucket and door 3d printed in steel by a laser melting process, like the way plastic powder printers work. Cost seemed high at first, but it would have taken me a lot of material and time to make myself. These parts are large, about 4x3x3 inches, with 1/8 to 3/16" thick walls, so the total print time on the SLM printers totals 120 hours!! The final parts should be very strong given the thickness of steel, plus the weight is needed to counterbalance the dipper stick and cables. CNC milling was another option, but the internal gaps between the teeth and ribs down inside the bucket makes that complex to machine, driving up costs.
So, this will be an interesting test, and will let me concentrate on my normal engine builds while getting a fun excavator to play with. Stay tuned!