Grok has been helping me figure out how to replace CFC with aluminum tube with minimal weight increase. It appears that .5" OD .035" wall is slightly stiffer than the CFC tube that I now use for the axes. This lets me reuse my existing polar and declination housings, bearings, and drive gears.
I have been attempting to learn to use FreeCAD and no tutorial seems to get me over the first step of converting a two dimensional drawing into a 3D object. I know at least one of you has admitted FreeCAD experience. I would be quite happy to pay someone to use Remote Desktop Connection and help me past this obstacle.
UPDATE: Just realized that I do not need to replace existing housing and axes They are already cut
I use FreeCAD. The thing that is tricky is there are multiple possible workflows. You're primarily working in either the Part or the Part Design workbench, and it's tricky to switch between them. Part is mostly used for Adding shapes together. Part Design is used for defining flat drawing like surfaces and "Padding" them to the desired height.
ReplyDeleteFor example, to make a simple pipe. In the Part Workbench, you'd make a cylinder of the appropriate length and outside diameter. Then you'd make another cylinder slightly longer, with the desired inside diameter, and subtract it from the first.
In the Part Design workbench, you'd create a sketch plane, draw the two circles for the diameters, leave the sketch view, select the tube on the sketch and extrude it to the desired length. (this is more powerful because you can also extrude it along other shapes, if you wanted a curved pipe, for example).
There's a guy who does some relatively good tutorials on YouTube under the name MangoJelly. The o might be a zero....
I have started watching MangoJelly. Your comment helps.
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