Worldwide slot car chat on Zoom! - Printable Version

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RE: Worldwide slot car chat on Zoom! - BAracer - 3rd-Nov-21

#80

Learning by Doing...


Don started the Chat with an update on his projects. The red Sideways Ford is coming along, but no mirrors fitted yet? As Don noted "this car is a racer, it doesn't need mirrors". And with regards to the blue paint body he showed us previously? "One car at a time". Wise words from someone who is actually getting through his projects!

Mike showed of this week's Scalextric purchases, which included the Castrol Aston Martin whose paint job had everyone drooling. And with regards mirrors, some of the cars had flexible ones, some were more rigid, and all were currently still attached as they hadn't raced yet. Henri's Land Rover 3DP body has now been placed on a raid chassis, and we saw video evidence that it goes great in a straight line...he admitted it still needed a bit of tuning to help it round the curvy bits of track. 

JohnK gave an update on the Porsche 925. We learnt all about how 'guide coats' can help with paint finishes this week. Lots of chat with the next person on the production line with regards the options for fitting bodies to chassis and creating room for the motor. John even took the opportunity to sit the body on some wheels to get an impression of how the final car might look, and what a transformation from just seeing it as a loose body.

Dewann has started on the scenery for his tracks. He is seeing all the options available with fresh eyes and he showed us the various card and wooden options that are available for buildings out there, big cost differences between the two, but which are best value? And not forgetting the interiors as well...scenery doesn't have to stop at the windows for Dewann! And to keep his hand in with car purchases, we saw some classic 60s comic/cartoon cars that are on his radar.

Big Den has done his first spray paint job, and it's not just the smell he's become addicted to, he's going to be doing many more now he has got over the hurdle of doing the first one! He showed off lots if pictures of potential projects, including one car that is based on the concept of a catamaran with the driver sitting between the two wheels on the left hand side of the car, with the engine over the right hand wheels!

No Wayne this week, so we quickly got to Club Corner. Frank got in quick with the news that he had only gone and won a race over the weekend. Big Den on the other hand hasn't quite made it onto the podium in Tasmania. But visitors to his club had brought some interesting plastic/brass hybrid chassis cars with them that did rather well. This opened up a discussion on the benefits of this set up, with reference to the output from the Slotworx company in Australia.

Greg then gave a meaty tutorial on how to design a chassis in CAD for printing at home. Based on the old adage "See One, Do One, Teach One" and the feedback from the willing pupils on the Chat, he unlocked or demystified a few secrets on how to get something half decent drawn on the screen that your printer would recognise to print. Whilst Greg caveated everything he did by saying there might be other ways to enter data into the model, or that other CAD software might need data entered in a different way, just seeing something being you recognise being created on the screen in front of you in real time is a real help in explaining the concept of CAD and 3DP. Kevan chipped in with the ability to create libraries of standard 'parts' which you can import into designs to save re-inventing the wheel each time, e.g. a standard hole for a motor pod. Our Alan highlighted the issue of not all chassis being flat and CAD friendly, and the need to learn how to create truly 3D items in CAD. Garth picked up on this and reminded us that CAD design doesn't necessarily mean reproducing designs that have been developed for the injection molded manufacturing process; that CAD gives us the opportunity and the probable need, the design chassis (for example) for the 3DP process. 

Henri finished the Chat off with an example of a chassis for his Alfa that had taken him two weeks to design in CAD. Dennis suggested that he could have probably made three brass chassis in that time. Such is progress...

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RE: Worldwide slot car chat on Zoom! - MrFlippant - 4th-Nov-21

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RE: Worldwide slot car chat on Zoom! - MrFlippant - 7th-Nov-21

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RE: Worldwide slot car chat on Zoom! - MrFlippant - 7th-Nov-21

(Deleted old links to avoid accidental clicking.)

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RE: Worldwide slot car chat on Zoom! - Scuderia_Turini - 8th-Nov-21

The clocks went back last week in the UK so that meeting started in the UK at 23:00 hours instead of the usual midnight time. I think that the clocks in North America went back this week.

Leo (UK)

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RE: Worldwide slot car chat on Zoom! - BAracer - 9th-Nov-21

#82

"Let's pour some rubber..."

JohnK started the ball rolling with an update on the GG Whaletail. He has had one of those eureka moments where, having spend loads of time looking as something and trying to make it fit, you finally realise that you need to scrap it and start from scratch. And that is what he has done with the interior cockpit of the car. Full depth in the original, but needing to be shorter to allow for the motor, and shallower to allow for some body float on the chassis, he has made up a bespoke one that ticked all of Dennis's boxes ahead of the chassis build. Not wishing to worry John, but Greg is itching to have another car giveaway for when he makes it to 2k subscribers. So sign up quickly if you want a chance to win a Porsche...

Brian took us through the validation process he has followed having picked a 3D design for a Sunbeam Tiger free off the internet. It's too long, too wide, too long a wheelbase, but "it's a nice model". Everyone chipped in with ideas on how to get it to match the 1:1 car...and if Brian takes up all the advice, it might look a bit weird and disproportioned, but Dewann will always be there to buy it to go with his new collection of weird and disproportionately shaped comic cars.

Dewann gave us a look at the massive hotel building he has made out of the cardboard kit, and his computer desktop, and his computer desktop, and his computer desktop...Our Leo has taken a slightly different approach to scenery making. He has 3DP'ed a Race Control Tower as an introductory offer from SlotRacer.Online's new 3DP section, courtesy of JMay. All he needs to do now is work out what to do with it! Bill showed off two cars that he has just chipped for digital running. As he is beginning to find out, wiring the chips is the easy part, fitting the wiring into the limited space between the chassis and body is the hard bit!

Garth is after a 1:32 scale Briggs & Cunningham 1959 Corvette. Out came everyone's Corvettes..."No Steve, not that one, not enough headlights.". "No Don, right car, wrong scale". But a probably supplier was named in the Chat. Jeremy wanted to know the secret for making a smooth approach and descent for a bridge on his track. Lots and lots of advice was offered, and almost all of it came down to one, well proven technique that will look the business. 

For Track Topics this week, Greg had a good old moan about how adding chemicals to his foam tyres is causing them to come off the hubs as he goes round corners, or as he calls it, suffering a touch of chatter. He was in complete denial that he was doing anything illegal or outside manufacturers recommendations, so to help him out, Dennis disclosed the secret technique for gluing foam tyres back onto hubs that has evolved over the decades of foam tyre racing.

Bill has a problem with his two lane digital track in that one lane is so much easier to drive that the other, and he was wondering about ways to equalise things up a bit. A simple question, and one that may be quite common. The answers were varied and touched on corner radii, corner visibility, straight/corner relationships, crossover locations on digital tracks and even overtaking techniques on digital tracks. Lots of ideas for consideration. 

Luff was able to demonstrate how he dealt with the topic of track gradient and cambers using a hill climb track he had prepared earlier. This showed how his track starts going up, and just keeps going up. And then goes up some more. What more would you want out of a hill climb track? Dennis had the answer...low cloud. The Halloween race meeting at Electric Dreams featured fancily dressed racers, fancily dressed cars, races run in the twilight zone with just the car headlights to show the way, and...a smoke machine! 

Paul has been quiet on here recently, but he came on this week to reveal why. He has been going round and round all the slot car shops in the UK buying up one piece of SRC spare part each time...calmly, not drawing attention to himself...until this evening. His motivation is to build up examples of all the un-available/discontinued SRC Formula 1 cars out of spare parts! And he has boxes and boxes and takeaway boxes full of bits ready to build up Renaults and Ferraris and the like. Obviously he had to keep it all hush hush in order to avoid alerting SRC who might then has adjusted the price of the spares accordingly. And the other reason of course, was that it has given him lots of boxes that he can now stack up on his workbench and hide his still unopened 3D printer.

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RE: Worldwide slot car chat on Zoom! - MrFlippant - 9th-Nov-21

(8th-Nov-21, 10:32 PM)Scuderia_Turini Wrote:  The clocks went back last week in the UK so that meeting started in the UK at 23:00 hours instead of the usual midnight time. I think that the clocks in North America went back this week.

Leo (UK)

Yep, I think we're back in sync now. In any case, I'm starting the upcoming chat tomorrow at 11am MY time, here in the Seattle area. Whatever time that is for anyone else is their business. :P

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RE: Worldwide slot car chat on Zoom! - BAracer - 9th-Nov-21

(9th-Nov-21, 03:56 PM)MrFlippant Wrote:  

(8th-Nov-21, 10:32 PM)Scuderia_Turini Wrote:  The clocks went back last week in the UK so that meeting started in the UK at 23:00 hours instead of the usual midnight time. I think that the clocks in North America went back this week.

Leo (UK)

Yep, I think we're back in sync now. In any case, I'm starting the upcoming chat tomorrow at 11am MY time, here in the Seattle area. Whatever time that is for anyone else is their business. :P

What do you reckon Leo...7pm start here in the UK?

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RE: Worldwide slot car chat on Zoom! - Scuderia_Turini - 10th-Nov-21

Yeah, here we go !

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RE: Worldwide slot car chat on Zoom! - Nonfractal - 10th-Nov-21

As promised, link to my home club website
http://www.nascotwoodslotcarclub.co.uk/
Alan

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