Pivot mounts, swing arm hinge and mountnig blocks

Today we continued the progress on the booster rocket pieces.

In the previous entry, I explained that due to these pieces being structural pieces, I wanted to re-do them in aluminum where possible.

My friend Fred, from East Coast Sign Pro, had some good suggestions and since his CNC machine is up and running, we had a chance to use it to fabricate the pivot mounts and the swing arm hinges.

With the help of a welding friend, the swing arm was welded together, filed and ready to go home.

With those pieces done for now, it was time to drill and tap holes into the pivot and mounting blocks that the swing arms will attach to.

In the upper left is the resin version we used to model the aluminum ones and fabricate.  It was a little tricky drilling  the hole in the bottom of this piece, a small vice is your friend!

These are the swing arm mounting arms which will serve as guides for it.

While seeing a bunch of small aluminum pieces with tapped holes may not look that exciting, they do take a lot of work to do! 


Next time, its time to drill the holes into the swing arm where it will bolt into the top of the booster cover.  We're slowly getting to the point we can install structures into the leg...then look at getting servos to work with it.