2025-02-26

Last modified: 2025-02-26 14:06:35

• Car ramp toy
• Clock

Car ramp toy

Assembled on a wooden frame:

I tried it out with an ordinary car toy, and it works but it slides on its roof on half of it, as you'd expect. So I need to make an invertible toy car.

I used "pause at layer" to put an M10 nut inside it, and a colour change at the middle layer to make it 2 colours, so when it flips over to change direction it will "change colour".

Now to try to fit the wheels...

The first thing I tried was 1mm rods, loose in both the body and the wheel, and mushroomed over at the end. I made them slightly too loose in the wheel so it was wobbly. I mushroomed over the end by squeezing tightly in the vice. The first end with the axle loose, the second end once it's in the car, which means you need extra length. It worked and was easy but left sharp ends.

So the next thing was to go up to 1.5mm rods, make them loose in the body and press-fit in the wheels. That works, doesn't roll as easily but less wobbly and no sharp ends.

It doesn't roll down very well, gets derailed most of the time. In a way that makes it more fun because you can keep trying and hope to get a clean run.

Clock

I've machined an aluminium rod down to 12mm, and machined a flat on it, and it fits in the parts it needs to fit in, great success.

I didn't do a great job of turning the 12mm diameter, it has lots of steps and discontinuities in it. It'll do though.

I couldn't turn it in one go because the lathe turns a taper, so I did it in lots of sections.

Oh my god I'm an idiot.

I cut the shaft to about 250mm long, because I remembered that the frame pieces are 244mm long. But it needs to be 50mm on top of that because it needs to go into the bearings that are further apart than the frame rails.

So annoying, I would have been better off just not cutting it at all, it was 300mm when I started.

Probably the easiest fix is to make different bearing blocks that stick inwards a bit.

Annoying.