Cat 340D Excavator build

[crueby]

Originally Posted by ddmckee54

Chris:

If you move the cylinder are you still going to get the curl on the bucket that you need in the other direction? Don't want to be dropping bits out of the bucket when trying to stack the dirt on top of a tall pile.

I warned you those Shop Elves would weasel their way into this site, told you they were just like germs and that they would spread.

Just don't tell anybody on this site where you've hidden the elves' explosives, or their booze, and you should be OK.

Don

Yes - I took the bucket off, and held it to the side of the stick and moved the cylinder piston to both ends to figure out how much to change the pivot points, so it SHOULD be good now. I hope.... Before, the bucket was reaching the furthest-curl-in point with the cylinder only partway out, and would not go to the furthest-open point at all, stopping when the piston bottomed out - this should re-center things. Also, the distance between the pivot holes on the plates attached to the bucket were too far apart, moved them in so that the travel angle is higher. This should make it match the real machine closer, I had mis-measured things initially and did not understand the geometry of how the movement worked.


I have the changes made, and the parts have been given a respray to coat the new cut edges. Tomorrow will be able to reassemble and test the movement again. In the meantime, started making the rack that will hold all the speed controllers for the motors in a neat row. The rack is plywood, with notches cut in on the sides for the ESC's to slide into. The sides are glued up on a baseboard, when that sets up I can drill mounting holes to screw it to the cab floor plate and start the wiring.

[crueby]

Some more progress to show - the wiring is pretty much done, still want to bundle up some of them but all is functional. Re-tensioned the tracks, since it was fine when the drive wheel was pulling the tracks from underneath, but going in the other direction where it was pulling the tracks over the top, the plates were bunching up as they went under the track rollers - just needed another 1/8" of movement outwards on the idler wheels. Also started in on the cab - making it out of a thin ply skin and shaped wood formers for where it angles in at the top, plus ply frames around the back:





Next steps will be to add the inner walls and top panels, then can start on the operators cab.




On the background project, have gotten a lot done on the Mann Steam Wagon - 3D CAD model is pretty much done, and I've decided on a 1:8 scale for that build, with a 3" diameter gas fired boiler. The 3D model was done at full-size dimensions, will make a copy of it and scale it down to 1/8, then start generating the 2D drawings for the parts. Here is a screen capture from Fusion: