dex210: the way it should have been!

[dex210Nick]

Just over a year ago, I took a dremel to a piece of g10 plastic and made myself a custom chassis for my dex210. The car drove great with the new chassis, but my dremel work was sloppy at best.

This past summer I kept myself busy building a CNC router. Now that I have precision machining and CAD at my disposal, I decided to revisit my custom chassis.

The features:
Optimized battery placement for mid motor
-side by side saddle
-sideways shorty
made from 3/32" g10 plastic
v1 chassis length
~50g lighter than stock v1 chassis

It's a dual deck design. The last missing element is a brace between the transmission case and top deck. The final version will be made of carbon fiber for an even stiffer and lighter setup. Don't get me wrong, it's already plenty stiff and plenty light. At full race prep, it weighs in at 1,555g... with a 30g brass toe block!

My previous chassis was a +8mm, but I decided to go back to the v1 length because the track I race on is pretty tight. I didn't feel like the extra 8mm was doing anything for me other than making it harder to turn the car.







1/30/18 Edit: Reuploaded images to imgur. Screw photobucket.

[mr. ed]

Nice work.
Bit hard to reach the electronics, but if you don't swap things around regularly that don't matter.
Show us some pics of the router too, please?

[dex210Nick]

Thanks! The electronics were a bit more difficult to place than I had anticipated, but certainly still easier to do than on a dex410! My main concern was getting the transponder in an out to swap it between cars, but it's really not that hard to get it in and out.

You're right, I did forget to post the most important part! Here's my machine with my car for scale. My goal is to figure out how to make enough money with it to support my RC addiction.


After I built it, I started milling better parts for it. Here's the re-designed z axis:


1/30/18 Edit: Reuploaded images to imgur. Screw photobucket.

[dex210Nick]

Got it all finnished up now. The turnbuckle brace idea did not work well at all. The rear flexed a ton. I designed and milled a solid top brace to replace it and now there's almost no flex. I'll be taking it to the track tonight to give it a go and see how it drives.




1/30/18 Edit: Reuploaded images to imgur. Screw photobucket.

[orinoco]

Wow...love the home made cnc mill, great engineering skills, well done. Impressive.

[mr. ed]

That's an impressive machine you created.
How do you clamp the raw material down on it?
And which format file do you need for cutting parts?