Pop Top Suburban.

I thought I had posted this already, but apparently not.  Most of these pics / info is over a year old, and can also be seen here:  http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=801632

Now that its spring break, I'm hoping to get this thing built.  For now, here's the old info for y'all to catch up on.

This idea has been kicking around in the back of my head for a couple of years now. I want a "Poptop" that I can mount to the roof rack of my Suburban. I had a few basic design requirements-

1. Has to be TALL. At least 6 feet on one end. I'll still have to slouch majorly, but I can handle 6 feet.

2. Room for two people.

3. Simple construction, easy to build, no large time commitment.

4. CHEAP.

5. Was hoping that one person would be able to mount / dismount from the roof, but I don't think thats going to be possible unless I have a "hoist" of some sort in my garage... Also a possiblity.

After monkeyin around with this idea forever, Here's what I came up with. Got LOTS of other drawings with a ton more ideas, but here are a few basics to show you the idea.

Havent decided WHERE on the roof its going, but I am planning on putting it as far towards the front for two reasons- I can have a "door" in the floor where the sunroof is, allowing me to get in and out through the sunroof, and it will also leave the back end of the roof rack free for tying other stuff on.



Here you can see a little on how I plan to hold the lid UP. 4 pieces of conduit near the corners- once side much longer than the other. Not 100% on how I'm going to attach them to the lid, but current thinking is I will flatten the upper end of the conduit enough to put the skinny end of a T hinge in it, then weld the two together and bolt the whole thing to the roof.



Sides of the camper will be coming from a ginormous canvas cabin tent I picked up at a yard sale a few years ago. The floor is likely going to be 3/4 CDX, but open to suggestions? Canvas will be stapled to the underside of the floor on the bottom, then a pocket will be sewn all the way around the top of the canvas. Inside of that pocket will be conduit to keep the shape, which will be bolted to the roof.



Lower end of the conduit will have something like pictured, but just a piece of angle iron or aluminum with slots cut in it for the conduit support pole to rest in- several of them to allow for adjusting tension.


Course, all them's ideas are about 2 years old.  I've been doing a lot of doodling and have come up with a lot of other ideas.  Last summer, I scored this.



It was free. Came off of a '70's Ford long box, ironically.. Measurements are a little off for what I want but we'll get there in a bit.



 I got the saw out and started hacking. Jig saw- Not so much.



Skill saw with the blade on backwards- much better!





Here's where it'll be mounted.



A sheet of plywood would sit on both outer racks and have the support of the middle rib all the way down. The roof is definitely strong enough to hold me standing on it with zero flex or dents in the roof, so I'm pretty sure a 3/4 chunk of plywood supported by the 2 roof rack bars and the center ribs will be plenty strong without any cross braces underneath, which will help keep the profile LOW.

Next issue- the roof curves down towards the front of the 'burb. This was going to be a problem because this is where I wanted to be able to stand- there wouldn't have been any support under this section of floor. Problem solved- I just wont stand. The sun roof entrance will be at the very far end of the floor meaning whoever's sleeping up there won't be able to do anything there anyways.



Another idea I've had kickin around for a while is to enclose this area- make some type of wall that hooks to the hatch when its open like this creating a "room" off the back of the 'burb. This is a long ways down the road but you never know. I can *just* stand under this without bonking my head.



Test fitting.







Its way too wide. Going to chop it about 5 inches in from one side, overlap the two pieces, and bolt them back together with copious amounts of silicone in between. Think it'll work?



Hardest part is going to be trimming around the edges to match the contours of the suburban after I get it cut down to the right size...

Chopy chopy.

Here's what I was thinking at first- cut on blue line, overlap, bolt together.



Wasn't going to give me enough room, and I didnt want to chop BOTH side and bolt them together, so I decided to cut the middle. REALLY didnt want to do this cause it seems like a guaranteed leak point, but oh well. We'll see how it works. Markin and measurin.



Chop chop.



Overlaps about 3 inches. Will be bolted & glued together down the center, and will have more support from the conduit frame that holds up the tent wall.



So there you go.  Should be all caught up.  I do have the two halves bolted together, and have scrounged up some extra house wrap scraps to use for the tent walls.  Changed the design for the struts quite a bit and am going out to Home Depot here in a bit to buy parts.  *HOPEFULLY*, I will have more progress to report this week!  Really hoping to be able to get out and use it on the Father-Son campout this year, which is usually in April. 

3D printed parts- Functional? YES!

Been working on fine tuning the Mendelmax 2.0.  Have figured several things out, and am working on a few "Quickstart" guides.  In the meantime, here's a few of my test pieces.

One of my students asked me if I could make some parts for his dads motorcycle helmet that he apparently was unable to find anywhere.  There were to pieces, mirror images, and only one was broken.  He brought both parts in, I measured them up and drew it up in Sketchup.  The black are the old, you can see the one on the left is missing a piece. Blue are the new parts, and they are pretty darn close!



I had to go back after they printed and cut a little piece out, but it took all of 5 seconds on each part.
 



Had the speeds turned down quite a bit and the quality looks excellent. Took about 13 minutes to finish both of them.  He told me today the parts fit perfectly and the helmet works like new!

'Nuther project for the woods teacher. He wanted some rollers to fit on a pipe rail thingy he's building. Much bigger print, took about 43 minutes for each half at high speed.









As you can see, they are a little rough.  There is a setting to crank up the number of "edges" in a circle in Sketchup, but I forgot to change that and had it printing already. He took it home and tried it on the pipe, said he thinks it will work perfectly the way it is. He needs three more, then he's going to build a rail out of the pipe and a carriage with the wheels to go on the pipe to carry his cutting torch.

Pic he texted me:



And some spare parts just in case. Speed was cranked up on these too, and they came out pretty nice. Maybe a 2 minute print time.




And lastly today's somewhat useless invention. Made these snaps to go on over the extrusions to hold wires down.













I was sure someone had to already have thought of this, turns out I was right...

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:15812

I've been starting to make separate "profiles" in Slic3r- I have one for small parts with slower speeds and cooling fan, and one for larger parts with higher speeds.  Finally starting to get the hang of this thing, LOTSA fun!  The Mendelmax is more than capable- even more than I had hoped.  Still need to get the updated z axis parts installed, maybe over spring break!

Future Project, help wanted!

Alright, so some friends of mine approached me and asked me to build the a bicycle trailer that they can carry their son, Dan in.  Dan is about 35 years old and mentally handicapped.  The trailer is going to have to be strong enough to carry him, light enough to be towed, and safe.

I've been kicking several ideas around for the last week and playing around on Sketchup.  Here's what I've come up with.  Remember, these are JUST ideas at this point, I really don't know much about bicycle trailers but I'm learning a lot along the way, and would love to hear it if anyone has any suggestions.

First sketches:













Real rough.  As you can see from the next few sketches, a lot has changed.  Kicked around a few more ideas, and discarded a few others.

Small tires, with a stroller version. Will be using bike tires, so this is moot.



Seat suspension. Probably won't be doing this.



Extended frame for adding a basket or carrying stuff.



Rollbar / pushbar for stroller.



Stroller, with detachable tongue / attachable caster wheel. Tongue stows under trailer.



Other pics.





Keep in mind these are just design ideas... The trailer will likely be skinnier (this model has a 3' wide frame, will probably cut that down to 2') and change a bunch while building. Sounds like they really want me to build it, so I will, but there are a few other projects on the table and a few other things to iron out here first. May start on it over spring break, we'll just have to wait and see. 


Current things we have decided on: 

Bicycle wheels for sure.  Probably 16", as I've read the smaller tires handle cornering forces better?

Low side mount tongue.

Some type of platform off the back to mount a basket or case of some sorts.

Fenders for the pull bicycles- Store bought.

Fenders for the trailer- going to try hand making them out of aluminum sheet, but no cover on the outside.

Rotomolded racing seat from JEGS, with a 5 pt harness.

Leg board most likely also hand made by me out of aluminum sheet.


Things they seem to maybe want:

Seat suspension

Stroller castor / removable tongue

Powedercoated frame.



There you have it.  I want to try and keep very little weight on the tongue, so the seat position will likely move back.  The axles will be 5/8" rod welded to the top of the frame crossbar to lower the center of gravity more.  I will probably have to build some type of bracket behind the seat to mount the safety harness too as well.

Anything I'm missing?  Or, I know I'm missing about thirteen hundred things, wanna enlighten me on a few?!

Make-It Workshop

Well, I had TWO takers for my community class... Figured it'd help get the word out so we went ahead and did (are doing) the class anyways. I thought people around here would love a cheap hackerspace. Maybe when the word gets out we can do more with that.

Anyways, my two students wanted to do a few different things. One wanted to tune up her bike. No prob, easy peasy. Got that done. Her son (my other student) wants to build a hard top for his Isuzu Amigo. Errr... Okay. No idea how to do that but they seemed willing to experiment and were okay if it doesn't turn out, so here we go...

LOTS of figuring and head scratching.





I'm pretty limited by the size of my tools, but we picked a route to go and we're giving it a try.  I've got a 24" shear and a 24" brake, so anything over 2 feet is out if it needs to be done "in house".


We spent a bunch of time with a marker and some paper to trace the curve and transfer it to the metal.  At the end of the evening, as we were putting on the soft top, I picked up the side window and realized it ALREADY has the perfect shape and we could have just traced it.  Ah well, live and learn.




Got to use my custom built radius fingers!  Made 4 radius bends to get a much larger curved bend to match the corner around the back.




Using the edge former again.  Glad I've spent some time experimenting with it, but I still feel like it can do a lot more than I know.  Need to read into that.




One side down.  The top edge of the side will be folded over and the current plan is to rivet the top to the side along that bend.  Obviously, that means the top back corner will need trimmed still, but the lower edges seem to fit well and the edge we rolled on them even snaps in to the existing frame fairly evenly!





One side "done". Still need to clean up the rolled edge and trim a few parts off.  Originally the plan was to make the top in two pieces, then two sides, and then a back piece.  He's going to contact some other shops and see if he can find access to a larger break so we can make the top and back in one big piece, then rivet the sides on. More to follow after class next week!