Blast Door LCD Screen Mod Jr.

Ah, the good ol' Hummer. I had a blast modeling that thing back in the day, when I knew jack squat about 3d modeling. Good times!

I used a program called Zmodeler to model it. A great program for beginners! It doesn't have that massive maze of buttons, options, and windows upon windows of settings that some of the professional programs like 3dStudioMax and Maya have. It's not as powerful as the big guns, but like I said, it's great for beginners.


Now, back to the build. Update time!

I've made a good deal of progress on getting the upper half (tug) and the lower half (guide wheels) connected together in a manner that is much more stable and sturdy than the previous method. Of course, now that I think about it, I pretty much rushed the previous method and threw it together, because, at the time, the whole actuator idea was still in its proof of concept stage. That stage ended quickly when the thing spat the track out at me as I mentioned in my first post :D

For those that are curious, here is how I had it set up before:

Pretty much a bolt on either side, fixed to the top half, screwed into nuts attached to the bottom half (no pun intended), and tightened to make both halves "hug" the track. It worked, but it was ugly, and it wasn't really a sturdy way of keeping the two halves attached. Both halves tended to go askew from one another ever so slightly.





Here's what I have now. It isn't finished yet. I don't have the tightening mechanism in place, but that will be the next thing I work on.

As you can see, this new version consists of a larger hollow tube placed on the four corners of the tug unit. Four more smaller tubes are placed in the same relative spots on the guide wheels unit. The smaller tubes slide into the larger tubes, giving the whole unit four points of support.

The tightening mechanism will consist of two more large hollow tubes attached to the guide wheels unit. These will be tapped/threaded and a screw will come down through a hole in the top of the tug unit. The screws go into the threaded tube, and will let me tighten/loosen/fine-tune how hard the whole unit "hugs" the track.


More on box progress...

I've ditched the floor, front, and rear walls that were shown in my first post. They just weren't square enough and straight enough to make a box that was as perfectly shaped as I could get it. I must have been having a bad day when I cut those, because they were poo.


So I remade them :D

They are of much better quality this time around.

I did a mock construction of the box to show you :D
Everything came together perfectly with no gaps, and no signs of crooked edges and unsquare corners.

The last pic shows how much space I have to work with inside this thing. Good thing I drew this up in Photoshop first and designed the actuator to use every inch of track that was there :banana:

Wow! This is looking great. I like the idea that it is designed to fit within 5" drive bays.

I'll bet you could sell these very well premade or as a simple kit if you wanted to. Good way to make money, although it does take the unique aspect out of the mod.

Congrats Nerdy! You landed the front page just like your pop!
http://www.thebestcasescenario.com

Front page huh? Wow, I'm honored! :D Thanks for the comments everyone!


Update time!

I've made tons of progress since the last update.



The tug/wheel unit is, for the most part, done.

As you can see, I've added two more pipes in the middle for the screws to screw into and tighten things up. Also you can see that I've added bumpers to the front and back of the guide unit to keep it from crashing at the ends of the track.




Now, on to the box unit, starting with the rear wall.


I've added holes in the rear wall for the two molex and composite cable connectors to mount into. I'll let you guess what the hole in the center is for :banana:

Rear wall with connectors in place.

Now for the front wall.
I added a hole in the front wall to route cables to the screen. Again, I'll let you guess what the indention in the middle is for ;)

And now for the side walls.

No doubt you've seen the screw holes on the edges of the front and rear walls. I opted for a less permanent means than glue for holding the box together. As Crimson has pointed out before, I didn't want to build myself into a corner. Here are the side walls with newly added L-brackets.

An overhead shot of the newly modded box pieces.

Now we're ready for assembly!

...a few minutes later, and we have an assembled, structurally sound box.

Now it's time to mount that track.

After spending hours trying to figure out how to mount the track into the box when there was virtually no space at all on either end to work with, I came up with an ingenious idea. Remember the hole in the center of the back wall, and the indention in the middle of the front wall? I'll let pictures speak for themselves.

Not only does this method of mounting the track save TONS of space, but it's relatively simple and is easy to disassemble/remove from the box.







With the track in, we can now mount the actuator.

Now it's time to fire up this sucker for test #1 :twisted:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...10158620781715

In the video, I was running the actuator at around half power with the variable speed POT kit that dad ordered. That's all it needed. With full power, it zips back and forth incredibly fast. I have no doubt in my mind that this will have enough grunt to raise and lower the blast door.


My design showed that I needed 11cm of clearance from the back of the actuator to the back wall to get the door to raise high enough. I made my design to use every inch of track that was there, so I would have exactly 11cm of clearance for the actuator to move, while still being able to fit the entire thing inside the box.

The actual build has remained faithful to the design. There is EXACTLY 11cm of clearance for the actuator to move.

Stay tuned, next week I'll begin working on the door itself!

I'm jealous but at the same time very proud!! :D
Way ta go son!

Charles

You both get +rep for being our first butt-kicking father & son duo!

Awsome work nice smooth action.

Bit of an update (to keep the topic alive). My blast door is finished now, and I'm working on how to attach it to the actuator. No pics at the moment, but expect some soon!

Amazing work there!

I'm looking forward to the next update!

-gaz

Uh...BUMP. :D


Sorry for the lack of updates, I took sort of a mini-break from the project, but I'm back on it.


So I've finished the blast door, I have mounted it to the actuator, and the actuator does indeed work (though I had to utilize a few crafty ideas to minimize slippage of the wheels).



Crafty ideas such as gluing a strip of rubber band onto the top of the track :D

The mount I used to attach the actuator to the door is actually quite simple...

Unfortunately, I can't show you a video or even pictures of the assembled build in action just yet. It's already in pieces and is being painted. :redface:

I can, however, show you progress of the painting. :banana:

As you can see, I'm taking a different approach to painting my door. I opted for an industrial sort of "warning stripes" look. As you can see, the black stripes are done. I will paint the yellow stripes tomorrow. Stay tuned!