I’ve built some fast pinewood derby cars in the past but this year was just about looking good. I’ve always loved the way those lowriders bounce and thought it would be cool to make a derby car do that. Here’s my version. A few more pictures and build details after the jump.
Category: scouts
Scout: A printable tribot
Here’s the first iteration of ‘Scout’. A simple printable frame for a robot based on two continuous rotation servos and an Arduino. The idea was to limit the number of printable parts and ‘vitamins’ to the bare minimum and keep the total cost for the bot below $50. I’ll use this to teach the robotics…
Deathtrap joins the collection
I finally got some pictures of my son’s derby car for his Bear den entry. This year we built a casket on wheels. Both parts of the lid are hinged and it carries a ‘Gummy’ skeleton as a rider. Obviously he had adult help on this design. The main parts were cut out on the…
Bad Idea
It’s Pinewood Derby season again and I kinda enjoy making derby cars. This year, my youngest son and I made an awesome car for his bear den division. It came out great and I’ll do a blog post on that one as soon as I get some good pictures. We also have an ‘open’ class…
Arrow of Light – Finished!
The Arrow of Light is the highest rank achieved in the BSA Cub Scout Program. It’s usually earned by boys in the 5th grade. Our pack had 9 boys earn the award this year. Most of them went ahead and crossed over to the troop to become Boy Scouts. It’s tradition to award a “career…
Arrow of Light – Finishing Touches
I’ve spent a couple days finishing up the plaques. I’ll post again with some final pictures. The finishing touches have all been manual things including: I hand routed a corner on the plaques to dress up the edges. Sanded and stained Rubbed with Tung oil The arrows were masked with tape and striped in various…
Arrow of Light – Drilling
The last CNC operation we need to do is drilling. The arrows will be mounted in the large pocket and will be epoxied to two posts. The posts will be glued into holes drilled into the plaque. I drew two circles in HeeksCNC to represent where I wanted the holes drilled. Then I selected the…
Arrow of Light – Keyhole
To hang the plaques, I’m going to cut a keyhole on the back. This is done with a keyhole cutter. The cutting process works like this: The cutter does rapid movement to position itself over the hole location It plunges into the material to the desired depth. It moves forward toward the top of the…
Arrow of Light – Engraving
To personalize each plaque, I’m going to engrave the Pack information, the year, and the boy’s name. In HeeksCNC, engraving is just a profile operation with the ‘tool on side’ parameter set for ‘on’. That isn’t to say that engraving is easy. It’s not. At least it’s not easy to get decent results. The complexity…
Arrow of Light – Profiling
The corners are just a simple curve and the profile operation is similarly simple. Since I don’t want the cutter to travel all the way around the plaque but rather just cut the corners, I have to move those arcs and line segments into a new sketch. Then I select the sketch and add a…