Whenever bigger projects are required (particularly those that involve steel and wood) I enlist the help of my buddy of 24 years Daryl. Over a couple of cold ones at the Union I did a Nike on him and said Just Do/Make It. Daryl in his usual way was polite enough not to tell me to take a hike but insisted that I draw up my ideas on paper so that he could get a clearer idea of what "just make it" meant.
Here was the initial "spec" I had drawn in pencil and scanned:
After some discussion with Daryl I modified it to have the stand at the rear like this:
But it just didn't seem right and we were concerned about stability and the strength of the display pole connections into the base. We had always assumed that the mounting mechanism at the bottom would be a POLE over which we would slip the pole that the display was on. Since the display was 50mm boxed aluminium we were looking for around 46mm boxed steel.
Daryl had the idea of speaking with a engineer friend to get some feedback on our design and thank goodness we did!
It turns out that the strongest shape is a triangle (I remember that now) and that a 3D triangular stand would probably provide the most strength and stability in the least amount of space. Another winning change in the design was to use a SLEEVE to mount the stand rather than a pole.
This was the Version 3 design:
Naturally the lengthy discussions over the preceding weeks had meant that the deadline (reps game day was Sunday) was fast approaching so we needed to start ASAP. I headed to Daryl's in the morning via Bunnings and his local steel merchant whereupon we came across our first stroke of luck - an off cut of 65mm round, 2mm thick steel sleeve that perfectly fitted the 50mm boxed aluminium pole. This meant no locking bolts would be required.
We spent the next 7 hours building this stand on Saturday. It was awesome using the grinder and arc welder and generally banging away with our hands. For office types like us, a day in the workshop is like a holiday! Here's the pics:
And now for a lick of "Mission Brown" paint:
The finished product drying (upside down):
1 comment:
Wow..now that isn't going to fall over in a sqwal ( Dramatic short significant change in weather characterised by heavy wind and rain.
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