Grandad's photos

Yesterday a man from Hamilton gave a presentation on how he can make car parts using laser sintering. This interesting process makes layers 20 microns thick from a CAD model. Very complex items can be manufactured, such as a hinge assembly with no hinge pin visible from outside. He had one of these rooks as an example, also a hollow golf ball.

The process is a bit like a photocopier, which lays a layer of print on the paper surface and cooks it on. This process takes a 20 micron layer of plastic, brass, steel, aluminium or whatever can be finely powdered, and each layer is sintered (welded) to the previous layer with a laser. Manufacturing in quantities hardly slows the machine down, whatever fits in the bin of about 0.5 m cube, so 200 of these rooks could be made simultaneously at little increase in cost over a one-off. Try making the steel spider below without investing huge man-hours or casting development costs. All you need now is a CAD drawing, and the centres can be hollow, to save weight.



There is more at http://www.warwick.ac.uk/atc/rpt/Techniques/sintering.htm

Just think, if the bin size could be expanded to 2m x 3m, a whole car chassis could be made of steel in one hit with no welding!

The meeting was run by the Historic Racing Club, and there were big fields of historic racers, F5000s and sports and GT cars, including a very fast TVR lapping 55 sec, the same as the fastest F5000! The Model-A had its first day on the Pukekohe track, and lap time was 2m 50 seconds. I improved the ignition points setting on the second day and unofficial time was 2m 23 sec. The Classic Regularity Trial grid is supposed to allow old vehicles to be out there and be used, but it has been hijacked by people with modern cars that don't have roll cages, so Cobras, M3 BMWs and Porsches whistled past me at 150 MPH, which was a bit disconcerting. The winner is the one who runs closest to their nominated times, several were within 0.5 seconds. My best lap was about 30 seconds under my nominated time, so not much chance of winning! The car caused a lot of interest, was heavily photographed and I was even asked for an autograph!. I will post some other pics if I can get a copy.

Puke is 2.8km long, so that's an average speed of 70.48 km/h or 44 MPH. A Model-A should do about 60MPH, so there is some scope for tweaking.

I left the track at mid-day (missing the second race) for the family do at Audrey & Noel's, covered on nanajulies blog.

Went the the National Car Show at Mystery Creek today with Robt Spencer. The show seemed smaller than other years, and burnouts took my attention for about 5 seconds before they became very boring. Spent a couple of hours on the LVVTA/Component Car Manufacturer's stand fielding queries, otherwise I think we had the most interesting cars.

The first 'S' Car Club outing in about 10 years met up on Saturday night at the Chateau with Lee & Margaret and Geoff and Sue, very enjoyable company. We met up at the Top of The Bruce, and had a walk to the views of a deep valley, then headed down to The Chateau to check in and find a spot in the lounge for a chat and a beer. An excellent dinner in the Restaurant followed. Sunday we breakfasted (very nice, too) then headed out to Turangi, taking a look at Te Porere Redoubt before we headed home in three directions. Now, for those who may not know, Te Porere Redoubt was where Captain John Chapman St George was killed (bullet in the brain) on 4th October 1869, while he was leading a charge of 200 Arawas against Te Kooti's men. He was also notable for being the son of Mrs George who married Alfred Domett, a Statesman and one of NZ's earliest Prime Ministers (1862-1863). Capt St George also brought a flock of sheep through from Napier to Taupo while he was acting as Govt Agent in Taupo in 1868.

Maybe I've found my style? Maybe Julie might like this style, too?
It's in the genes, you know, here's my uncle Ross & Aunty Clorine with their Model-A.

This is a cool site at Northwest Vintage Speedsters. I didn't realise how many people did this!

We went to Butterfly Creek today, out by Auckland Airport. You enter a big hall, passing some interesting tropical fish. The hall is kept at about 30 degrees and humid, like a tropical rainforest. Lots of bright butterflies flit around and even land on you. A hand-dryer is at the entrance for warming up your camera lens to avoid fogging. Good place for a $200 camera!

I was trying to take a picture of a hedge with a tail, but the tail got bigger.

Here's what 'ugly-brute' looked like when Jim Baird rescued it from being a tractor. It was converted to be a tractor in 1956, to haul a sprayer under the trees in an orchard. In 1976 it was retired to a shed, and Jim resurrected it 2001 to 2004 to the fine machine it is now!

A hiab crane today brought me all the spare parts, 3 engines, 2 gearboxes, 2 diffs.