Welcome to the engineering section of the website

(Al's workshop and projects)

Welcome to  the engineering section of the website. This section covers a lot of the work Al does for all of the team members to assist them in producing their models

Al's first interest in CNC machinery was sparked when the problem of how to create the mould for the Gloster Meteor nacelles.

Having spent  most of his working life working in motor and machinery control Al had an idea of what was needed to do so decided to have a go. The photo’s show the plug being turned.The rig consisted a 12 volt motor (variable speed) to rotate the plug, a stepper motor to drive the cutter carriage, a lead screw, a cutter (Dremel) and the usual limit switches.The carriage was spring loaded to run against a pattern and it all worked very well. The only thing Al forgot was an extract system for the foam ! It took weeks to clean the yellow foam out of the workshop.

(3) add 4th,5th and 6th axis to the router, Under way

(4) CNC the lathe

Extra project that was needed

Converted a BFE milling head to CNC  to allow steel to be milled for the metal parts of the Penrose Pegasus but subsequently used for parts for several of the teams models

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The success of forming the mould for the Meteor nacelle promoted the inclusion of the 4th, 5th & 6th axis to the router to enable 3d forming of moulds This is still work in progress.