Construction
The video above shows the process of attempting to clean the edges of the parts cut on the plasma cutter. Some time was spent in this process before determining the dimensions and edges produced by the plasma cutter would not suffice moving forward in the construction of the RC Baja truck. Below will describe some of these discrepancies and the decision to proceed with waterjet cutting instead.
The Figure above depicts the top down drawing tree of each critical components of the chassis and suspension assembly. These parts are referenced by their drawing titles and can be found in the link for the Final Project Report on the home page.
The image above depicts a few of the 3D printed components of the Chassis and Suspension portions of the RC Baja. These parts include the front bumper (left) and the turnbuckle (right). These parts were printed using white ABS filament due to its high structural integrity along with the capability to have dissolvable support filament added in the printing process.
Here, an photo was taken after the plasma cutter finished cutting the nested parts using a .DXF file. It can be seen that the plasma cutter was unable to fully cut the control arms from the 6061 T-6 aluminum due to the small nature of the parts along with liquid metal re-solidifying and knocking the plasma cutter nozzle off its vice.
Due to the plasma cutter being unsuccessful in cutting each of the parts and also leaving large amounts of blowout and overcutting of the material, it was decided that a waterjet would be used to cut the parts to a higher level of precision. The parts to the left were cut using the waterjet in comparison to the plasma cutter to the right. The waterjet left much cleaner and precise cuts and edges.
The image above further shows the inaccuracy of the plasma cutter outside of the fact that it was ultimately unable to fully cut the parts from the material. Directly above the unsuccessful cut are the control arms that were cut using the waterjet. Leaving much cleaner and precise cuts and dimensions.
A drill press was used to cut the mounting and pin holes in the baseplate and chassis components. The drill press, accompanied by centerpunching the hole positions, allowed for precise vertical drilling in each of the designated locations.
The picture above captures the filing process that took place throughout a large portion of the construction of the metal components of the RC Baja truck. Many edges needed to be filed down to provide range of motion and also to deburr cuts and sharp edges.
This pin location had to be filed down from the 90 degree edges to allow the pinned control arm to swivel in its full range of motion without making contact between the arm and baseplate.