Term 3 WEEK 1: Rotor Housing Cut, Started Rolling, 3mm SmartDrive Flange Mounts cut out

This week on Monday, I finished the rotor cut out on the CNC router after routing the rebate in the steel. I had to make another cut file to go a little bit deeper (0.3 lower) to get the steel out afterwards.

I then cleaned up the strip with getting rid of the burring and excess lubricant, it is looking quite good so far.

After the issues of the metal roller not bending exactly right, I decided to try and level the roller and try to align the rollers as much as possible so it would bend my piece uniformly. This is especially crucial for balance and precision of the rotor housing.

Once I was happy with the bender, I had one of my stakeholders Mr Smith help me with starting to roll it out. We also used a metal square and spirit level balance to get the steel feeding in right before beginning to roll it.

I ran out of time to finish it this week but will continue next week.

I also continued on working on the flange design and getting all the thin 3mm flanges cut out.

I tweaked my design after the first 2 or 3 plywood and steel tests to get a flange mount I was happy with. I then set up the router as usual and after leveling by planing with the 22mm router piece, I then began my cut with the 6mm carbide tip with settings I found to work well: 11 - 15% speed, 0.1mm cuts, 6000RPM, and a dab of lubricant around cut path.

After a few hours of more CNC routing, I managed to get all three flange plates cut out and after cleaning them up a little, they fit really nicely into the SmartDrive stators, with the 4 M16 threaded rods going through.