ThePog Builds a Caravan

[Rhyscar]

Great work so far! Such a cool project, and I am definitely partial to a camper build. Following with my popcorn. 

[ThePog]

On 06/11/2024 at 22:00, Rhyscar said:

Great work so far! Such a cool project, and I am definitely partial to a camper build. Following with my popcorn. 

Be prepared to eat a lot of popcorn...

[ThePog]

Dredge again, must be time for an update...

Much has happened, although the fucking thing still looks pretty much as it did a year ago, but many things have got in the way and many things have needed to be reworked. Like the main lift system which needed a bit of loving/strengthening, which is what I first did when I got back into it after I was back on form.

Plus I finished the kitchen, put in a whole lot more plumbing and built the beginnings of the shower/toilet

I had installed some china spec long lift servos for the bed lift but soon realised they were getting well out of sync and getting tangled up, so I spent ages along with the magnificent @h4nd making the bed lift all synchronous with the help of some hall sensors, magnets and an arduino. This worked, but the lift was slow and kindof noisy, plus one of the servos started making ominous clunking sounds. So naturally I binned all of that and reworked it with a custom cable lift instead, which is beautiful, fast and quiet. Ill get some pics of all this later when I reassemble it all, as I am getting the fabricated parts plated right now.

Next I changed the main lift motor from the straight cut winch motor to one from an electric wheelchair, this has made the lift faster and virtually silent which is great. No pics of that sorry, I should really have some due to the custom gearbox and disconnect I built for it, but I couldn't find them, maybe later.

Then we decided that the PVC sheet stuff was basically shit, it shattered way to easily and was difficult to fabricate. The knell of doom for this was when a sanding disc I was using caught and disintegrated and a part of it blew a hole through a panel... which didn't bode well for stone chips etc.

So naturally we binned all of that and decided to go for an ally frame with bonded ACM over the top.

And this is where the 3d printer has come into its own, I have printed all the joiners so I can have whatever angles etc, plus I have printed chunky parts that fit really nicely around some difficult geometry, like thus;
 

 

 

I am basically ready to start bonding outer panels on, maybe tomorrow night.

 

All of the lower panels cut out and ready to glue together;

 

And the brand new lid framing ready for when I have sorted the lower sections...

 

So yea I should be making solid progress on this over the next month as I need to get it sitting outside so I have room in the shed to make a kitchen for our renovations.....