So here's a couple pictures from projects from my manufacturing classes that I've been meaning to post.

First up is a mold for producing the stupid door-handle lifter thing that always breaks. I've found pretty cheap suppliers for them, but I needed a plastic part to make and mine had just broken. The Mold needs a tiny bit of rework with some cutters the school didn't have (mainly a long 1/16" endmill) but as you can see the part fits. (we shot it in "what was in the machine at the time" because we did it about 20 mins after the part was due) (Click For Bigger pics)






Second is a fixture for drilling brake rotors, I could say more about this but I'm tired and wanna get this stuff posted before I forget for another 4 months, feel free to ask questions:


First 9 holes look a bit off because I set the drill depth for the centerdrill a tad off (diameter v radius in some trig)

Here's a video of a bit of it in action (until I got bored and decided it was time to close the door on the machine):
VIDEO
The feeds are REALLY slow because it's not my tooling.

Anywho, some fun stuff I've done to get credit for playing with my 914, I'd love to hear what you guys think.

Thats pretty cool! I would love to get credit or pay for playing with my 914.

thats what I do for a living here in Japan but unfortunately not for 914's...all the prototype parts I make go to the big Japanese manufactures. Best of luck in your studies and schooling. Hope you land a good job...we might be hiring next year if your interested

why make the door latch cam when we have THOUSANDS of them in stock and our price is reasonable and we guarantee it for life? There are many many other 914 parts that need to be made than to waste valuable time tooling up for a part that is already readily available

Because it was for class

How about making me about 50 of the round door jamb vents that I could buy from you then????

George, it's a good thing you're self employed. If you had a boss, you'd be fired for your inability to pay attention to detail.



Cliff, I like the colors of the door-handle lifter thing! If the part weren't hidden in the confines of the car, I'd be after a couple of them 'artistic' ones for back-ups when mine break.


What else have you made? I'd love to get into some manufacturing classes. It would make my learning curve a little easier for some of the stuff I'm doing.

Not 914 related but I was in charge of all of the manufacturing for my senior project. We made about 100 of these things:



And this whole thing (the big hunk of stainless on the BBQ looking thing):

Edit: Link goes to image that's too big for page now.

are they just random contraptions that demonstrate different skillsets? Or do they have a purpose like the door latch cam?

That's very cool. When I took machining back in the 80s, we had an actual tape reader mill, can you say nc, cnc was everywhere, but the school didn't have one. I did some fun car projects back then, but no such thing as a digital camera yet. machining was fun when you got to make parts you wanted to make. Not so much once I went to a job shop for a while. That's one reason I got in to repairing/designing the machines.

That's my senior project, the top is a brass "injector" for Nitrous Oxide. It's more or less a carburetor jet.

The bottom is the whole rocket assembly on the pressure testing barbecue.

The project was to do a redesign of a hybrid rocket test engine to accommodate larger grain shapes and provide headroom for research. A hybrid rocket utilizes a solid fuel (basically tire rubber in our case) and a liquid oxidizer (Nitrous Oxide) to support combustion.

Right on! I miss Cal Poly. Had alot of fun back in the day using school machines to make parts and SLO is such a great town.

Dude...any chance I can send you a set of brake rotors and you drill them out like that for my AX car? I have been wanting to do that for a while, but don't have a set-up like that.

-Britain

Thanks for sharing the things you are working on during school. It is great that you are able to work on things you have an interest in, while learning also. JoeO

Drilling brake rotors is more than just drilling a bunch of holes. Gazillions of dollars have been spent on pattern design, hole design, and stress relief. Drilled rotors have a high failure rate anyway, and home drilled ones have an even higher rate. Another thing, besides all that, you have to consider balance!

The Cap'n

Both Britain and Cliff are drilling rotors for autocross use.

It isn't going to be a problem for them.

Yes...for AX use only. I just want less unspring weight.

-Britain

So, I more or less stole this pattern off a rotor that had been in service on a much heavier car that saw much higher brake loading than mine, so I'm confident that it will work just fine in service. I dunno about the comment about home drilled rotors having a higher failure rate, I've seen no data one way or another (though I'd believe it). Balance here is a non-issue, the center of the rotor is located to within a few thou (as good as it would be on the car) and the pattern is symmetric.