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Does anyone use a laser cutter for making custom chassis? I have access to one and was wondering if there is a place to acquire the designs or at least get a starter design that I can edit in a program to fit my purposes? Finally what free programs do you use to create or edit these designs? My last question what materials and thickness is a good starting point to work with. I've heard of G10 being a good material, but can't seem to find something online that looks like what I want.
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Last edited by Loan Shark; December 5, 2020, 09:39 PM.Loan Shark aka Matt
I am Alive because Organ Donation Worked... TWICE
Lake Country, BC, Canada
Shark Pit: 38' Routed MDF -
Last year I took a tour of my local Makerspace and they had a CNC driven laser cutter. If there is a Makerspace near you you could call and find out if there is anyone there that can answer your questions. -
Matt, lots of steel chassis are laser cut,..........as far as chassis designs, you are more or less on your own, unless you copy some existing stuff. The end usage of the chassis will heavily influence its design,....so,...what do you want it for??........1/24th, 1/32, ...what type of tracks. what motors, will you be using sponge or "hard" tires.??.....lots of questions before the design takes place.
Cheers
Chris Walker
The following are all 1/32.....meant for club type racing, using rubber/urethane tires and typical plastic chassis car motors.
Last edited by chrisguyw; December 6, 2020, 04:58 PM.Comment
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I haven't used a laser cutter for a chassis but have cut some scale aircraft airframes on one. I did consider a slot chassis as a good project, but decided the development work to get to the speed where it might be competitive with current plastic chassis cars would take more time (and skill
) than I have. For a starting point I thought about taking ideas from the commercial steel frame pan type chassis. G10 would be the material I would use. As RichD suggested, if you have a local makerspace, check with them, they usually offer how to classes and have lots of experience working with different materials. Any of the available 2D vector drawing programs should work for doing your drawings (you can use a 3D program if you are familiar with one but the third dimension isn't needed for through cuts). I use Corel Draw but I'm a dinosaur who worked with it for decades professionally and just hung onto my last version when I retired.
cheers
Scott
Edit: oops too slow posting - pay more attention to Chris than to me. Does the laser you have access to have the capability of cutting steel? If so, that's the way to go - I just chose G10 as the lased cutter I use doesn't do metal cutting.Last edited by GT6; December 5, 2020, 10:00 PM.Comment
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My thoughts were for 1/32, updating some Fly & other manufacturers bodies with a better chassis. Maybe even test for some Proxies. Running on wood routed tracks almost exclusively, running on urethane and rubber. Possibly building Slot.it pods into them.Matt, lots of steel chassis are laser cut,..........as far as chassis designs, you are more or less on your own, unless you copy some existing stuff. The end usage of the chassis will heavily influence its design,....so,...what do you want it for??........1/24th, 1/32, ...what type of tracks. what motors, will you be using sponge or "hard" tires.??.....lots of questions before the design takes place.
Cheers
Chris Walker
Last edited by Loan Shark; December 5, 2020, 10:38 PM.Loan Shark aka Matt
I am Alive because Organ Donation Worked... TWICE
Lake Country, BC, Canada
Shark Pit: 38' Routed MDFComment
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I'm betting this laser cutter doesn't cut metal, so G10 would be my choice as well. Where do I find a source for it? Google and online stores haven't been any help at all.I haven't used a laser cutter for a chassis but have cut some scale aircraft airframes on one. I did consider a slot chassis as a good project, but decided the development work to get to the speed where it might be competitive with current plastic chassis cars would take more time (and skill) than I have. For a starting point I thought about taking ideas from the commercial steel frame pan type chassis. G10 would be the material I would use. As RichD suggested, if you have a local makerspace, check with them, they usually offer how to classes and have lots of experience working with different materials. Any of the available 2D vector drawing programs should work for doing your drawings (you can use a 3D program if you are familiar with one but the third dimension isn't needed for through cuts). I use Corel Draw but I'm a dinosaur who worked with it for decades professionally and just hung onto my last version when I retired.
cheers
Scott
Edit: oops too slow posting - pay more attention to Chris than to me. Does the laser you have access to have the capability of cutting steel? If so, that's the way to go - I just chose G10 as the lased cutter I use doesn't do metal cutting.Loan Shark aka Matt
I am Alive because Organ Donation Worked... TWICE
Lake Country, BC, Canada
Shark Pit: 38' Routed MDFComment
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More technology and equipment that would be fun to play with.Cheers
Dan
G.P AlbertaComment
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Absolutely have at that.
Look into the machine you have access to, ask a few questions of who uses it, find out what it can cut and what file you have to supply.
Then work up a test file and see what you can get.
I would love to see an affordable laser cutter in the marketplace that could cut 0.030” brass or steel - but I don’t think those are at consumer cost levels.
But cutting other materials could be really useful as well.Comment
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It belongs to my daughter. She uses it in her crafting business. I don't have the specs right now but it cost $8k Cdn. She mentioned she uses a Glowforge account to upload the designs. She can create the designs as svg files on Cricut, Inkscape, or Adobe Illustrator.Last edited by Loan Shark; December 7, 2020, 12:04 AM. -
Adobe illustrator is the all around gold standard tool to my thinking, but reasonable people differ.
Whatever you use, create a test file and see how it works. How small a diameter hole can the machine cut, how thick and which materials can it handle, what do the edges look like, how smooth are continous curves, how sharp are hard corners, can you cut half-depth scores, how close can you make two cut out shapes next to each other, all that kind of fooling around.
Find out what it can do - then work with that. That unique tool may prove really useful.
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