ryantaylor0@yahoo.com
Registered
A few weeks ago a friend told me that he could cut a plate for me using a water jet machine, and that got my wheels turning on designing my own DIR style backplate. I took to the Inter-web and found Huw Porter's design, and made an AutoCAD file based on his, then went to modifying it as I thought would be useful.
For material I have two pieces of, what I think is, 304 stainless, and a street-sign for proof of concept/ mock up.
Last night I decided to go ahead and give it a shot, I printed a full size pattern, and checked the dimensions, the center to center on the tank band/wing mounting holes 11" etc. Then I picked a spot on the sign. I covered the area with blue painters tape, so that I would be able to easily remove the pattern after I used spray adhesive to glue it in place.
Then I used a hammer and center punch to mark all of the holes that I would need to drill.
Drilled all of the holes, 3/8" for all of the mounting holes, and a 1/4" at the end of each slot (more on this later).
Now comes the tricky part, I used a wood router, with a 1/4" router bit for woodworking made by a company called Diablo. the base on my router is 6" wide, so I clamped a single piece of angle iron, 3" from the centerline of the slot. with intentions of following the angle iron. The problem came when the router attempted to walk away from the guide(angle iron) and the truth is I rushed this operation, I should have clamped better, and had two pieces of angle iron, one on each side. The good news is the router ate through the aluminum without any issues. almost as easily as wood.
The final (flat) plate with all of the tape and template removed, looks ok-ish, defiantly not useable for diving, but barely acceptable as proof of concept and dimensional checks. After looking at it, I think it has potential to be pretty cool, I may try to cut another one out of this material using the water jet machine, or with improved (lessons learned) methods much like this attempt. The cleanup would take a while if it were going to be used as all of the edges are rough/ sharp. I cut the outline using a regular woodcutting blade in a jigsaw, and if it were going to be used I would clean the entire perimeter with my table mounted belt sander.
So if things hadn't gotten trashy and unusable yet, they were about to, the bending went really badly, first of all, I intended to bend this plate in the W shaped pattern that Huw Porter designed for single tank diving, but I made the first bend the wrong direction, and immediately changed my mind and bent it in a more traditional double tank shape, I really should have waited to use a press-break, but I figured the plate as already well beyond the usable end of things, and didn't really matter, so why not give it a shot. so I clamped it in a vice with angle-iron on each side, and bent it on over. The bend along the tank band slots went really easily, because its basically perforated at that area, but the next bend has much more "meat" to it, therefore turned out more round than crisp, which may actually be more comfortable if it was done on purpose, but like it is it just looks like a mistake.
Sorry no pictures of the bending, but really, no one should ever try to duplicate this technique, soooo no real loss there.( actually no one should duplicate any of this! lol)
here it is, I figured out all kinds of stuff:
1. its worth $150 to have some one do this for you,
2. I'm going to make some changes and cut another prototype before the SS goes to the water-jet.
3. The webbing that I bought is a little too short (or maybe I'm too round)
4. The 1/4" slots are a little too wide, but its the narrowest bit I could fid at Home Depot for my router.
For extras:
here is Huw Porter's design
Here is my design, (You may notice little notches for the bend locations on the top and bottom)
And finally here is the unedited (no problems discovered) fixed yet .DWG AutoCAD file, that I used for this first run.... I just realized that Scuba board wont allow me to upload a .dwg file, so if you need the .dwg file send me your e-mail address, and I will send you a copy of the file.
Please send lots of feedback, constructive, destructive, whatever. I will be cutting another plate soon and I need all of the input I can get. I will be incorporating all of the techniques that I learned on this one, plus the edits that I make to the design to create another prototype that will be one step closer to the Stainless plate that I am working toward. If I'm very careful, and I do noting like what I did this first time, I may have a usable aluminum backplate in the end, with a cool yellow reflective coating.
And since I know someone will say it... I didn't steal the sign, it was gotten by legal means, and that's as far as I'm going with that.
Hope you enjoyed my description of this failure.
keep blowing bubbles,
-RT
For material I have two pieces of, what I think is, 304 stainless, and a street-sign for proof of concept/ mock up.
Last night I decided to go ahead and give it a shot, I printed a full size pattern, and checked the dimensions, the center to center on the tank band/wing mounting holes 11" etc. Then I picked a spot on the sign. I covered the area with blue painters tape, so that I would be able to easily remove the pattern after I used spray adhesive to glue it in place.
Then I used a hammer and center punch to mark all of the holes that I would need to drill.
Drilled all of the holes, 3/8" for all of the mounting holes, and a 1/4" at the end of each slot (more on this later).
Now comes the tricky part, I used a wood router, with a 1/4" router bit for woodworking made by a company called Diablo. the base on my router is 6" wide, so I clamped a single piece of angle iron, 3" from the centerline of the slot. with intentions of following the angle iron. The problem came when the router attempted to walk away from the guide(angle iron) and the truth is I rushed this operation, I should have clamped better, and had two pieces of angle iron, one on each side. The good news is the router ate through the aluminum without any issues. almost as easily as wood.
The final (flat) plate with all of the tape and template removed, looks ok-ish, defiantly not useable for diving, but barely acceptable as proof of concept and dimensional checks. After looking at it, I think it has potential to be pretty cool, I may try to cut another one out of this material using the water jet machine, or with improved (lessons learned) methods much like this attempt. The cleanup would take a while if it were going to be used as all of the edges are rough/ sharp. I cut the outline using a regular woodcutting blade in a jigsaw, and if it were going to be used I would clean the entire perimeter with my table mounted belt sander.
So if things hadn't gotten trashy and unusable yet, they were about to, the bending went really badly, first of all, I intended to bend this plate in the W shaped pattern that Huw Porter designed for single tank diving, but I made the first bend the wrong direction, and immediately changed my mind and bent it in a more traditional double tank shape, I really should have waited to use a press-break, but I figured the plate as already well beyond the usable end of things, and didn't really matter, so why not give it a shot. so I clamped it in a vice with angle-iron on each side, and bent it on over. The bend along the tank band slots went really easily, because its basically perforated at that area, but the next bend has much more "meat" to it, therefore turned out more round than crisp, which may actually be more comfortable if it was done on purpose, but like it is it just looks like a mistake.
Sorry no pictures of the bending, but really, no one should ever try to duplicate this technique, soooo no real loss there.( actually no one should duplicate any of this! lol)
here it is, I figured out all kinds of stuff:
1. its worth $150 to have some one do this for you,
2. I'm going to make some changes and cut another prototype before the SS goes to the water-jet.
3. The webbing that I bought is a little too short (or maybe I'm too round)
4. The 1/4" slots are a little too wide, but its the narrowest bit I could fid at Home Depot for my router.
For extras:
here is Huw Porter's design
Here is my design, (You may notice little notches for the bend locations on the top and bottom)
And finally here is the unedited (no problems discovered) fixed yet .DWG AutoCAD file, that I used for this first run.... I just realized that Scuba board wont allow me to upload a .dwg file, so if you need the .dwg file send me your e-mail address, and I will send you a copy of the file.
Please send lots of feedback, constructive, destructive, whatever. I will be cutting another plate soon and I need all of the input I can get. I will be incorporating all of the techniques that I learned on this one, plus the edits that I make to the design to create another prototype that will be one step closer to the Stainless plate that I am working toward. If I'm very careful, and I do noting like what I did this first time, I may have a usable aluminum backplate in the end, with a cool yellow reflective coating.
And since I know someone will say it... I didn't steal the sign, it was gotten by legal means, and that's as far as I'm going with that.
Hope you enjoyed my description of this failure.
keep blowing bubbles,
-RT
