Track bumper

The Audi R8 that I received from Don for my birthday last July is an excellent car to drive.
It holds the track well and can accommodate a bit of drifting at corners without de-slotting.

It does have a slight issue. The trouble is that its rear fin is a millimeter wider than the rear body. There is one place on the track where it drifts out and the fin regularly gets knocked off. I probably superglue it back on two out of three times I drive it!

To reduce that I have added a couple of extra tyres to the edge of the track.  This is just enough to stop the fin hitting.

Unfortunately while testing I got carried away and although I was no longer able to make it make contact at that corner, it did not stop me getting carried away at another corner, which de-slotted and collided fin first in to the cliff wall. I still had to glue to fin back on!

At least now it takes driver error or obstacles on the track to cause damage!

Ship Cargo Winch Model

A friend, Don, had been looking for a small cargo winch for a model ship he was making.

He'd seen some very good models produced using 3D printing.  My guess is these were professional prints and I was unsure if my 3D printer could create sufficient quality models in the tiny size required for these winches. I eventually thought I could give it a go.

The 1:150 plans are a bit vague on the details of the winch but I was able to find a web site about a similar ship.  http://www.lanevictory.org/laneVtour_mast_boom.php

The above are some useful photos of the winches from that site.  Those combined with some photo's of the model, as work in progress, I was able to guess a suitable scale.

I've created a 3D model based on those photos.

The winches are very small at the scale of the model. About 12mm wide by 11mm tall.  The first attempt needed some adjustment to try to get a better result.

First attempt with a melted mess where a pin should be

Revised design

The main change was to remove the tiny locating pins. They just ended up as melted blobs, each being smaller than 1mm.

The pin holes however worked well so if an alignment pin is required to locate the 3 parts a tiny brass rod could be used. I have found it very easy to align the parts without using anything to align them.  Just super glued together.

The lesson learnt from this is that a tiny tube prints out much better than a tiny solid cylinder.
I am happy with the end result. Hopefully they will look good in place on the ship.

3D Printer settings:
Layer height 0.1mm
Fill density 100% (solid)
Print speed 30 mm/s

Downloads:
Blend file
STL files (zip)
Licence attribution

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ISPConfig 3 Web Forwarding

My mail and web host provider is in the process of upgrading their control panel software along with putting in a new server.

I struggled to find documentation for what I wanted to do with the new software. There is a very limited amount of documentation on the following site:
http://docs.ispconfig.org/

It did not cover my requirement for very simple web forwarding.
The DNS server for my domain is hosted on this new server but my blog is hosted elsewhere.

The following screenshots show examples of the settings I needed to enter to get web forwarding to work to a Google Blogspot site. They may not be the only way, nor the best but they worked today:

Create the DNS zone first

Beware of web browsers caching and of DNS refresh times, particularly the Time To Live (TTL.)

Add a CNAME for the sub-domain you want to forward

Watch out for the final dot in the host names in the DNS records data column. Without the dot the host is treated as a sub-domain and appended to the root domain of the zone. You'd get 'isp1.refinitive.com.anewleaf.org.uk' instead of 'isp1.refinitive.com'

While testing, I set the TTL for the domain and the individual hosts to be 5 minutes (300 seconds) but despite that Chrome cached the incorrect web site. I needed to clear the browsing history before I could see the changes working.

Add a top level web site

Add an alias to redirect to any other URL

This was all trial and error, hence these instructions.

I believe, but I'm not confident that the abbreviation R, in the above, means redirect and the L means don't process any further rules on that host name. Anyway the example I based this on suggested always using the R,L type.

The following bit is only necessary if you want to redirect the root domain to a web site.
For example: http://anewleaf.org.uk to got to http://www.anewleaf.org.uk

Settings on the site Redirect tab

Like the alias forwarding you also need a CNAME record in the DNS for the host, in this case 'www'.

After a couple of days of use, with everything working as it should, I reverted the TTL's back to 3,600 seconds for the host names and 50,000 seconds for the domain.

Track and Cars

I've found the time to work on both my track and my model Land Rover Discovery 2.

I've been gluing in the windows of the Discovery. Yet again, I was not happy with the first attempt at gluing in the windows. I removed that attempt, trimmed it up and refitted more flush with the body.

I've also added a black border round each glass panel.

I used a long wooden stirring stick to put small drops of canopy glue along the edges of the clear plastic window inserts.

On the track I added another tyre wall where cars tend to drift out and hit a barrier very hard.

Outside In

I have just started fitting the windows to the model Discovery. I have only put in two windows so far but I have already decided that I should have designed them a different way.

I would have got more realistic results if I had created the body with a slight inset lip round most of the window frames. I could then have stuck the windows on, individually, from the outside. That would be exactly like the real vehicle.

The vacuum formed windows are forced in to a slight curve, even though the mold is sharp, so they cannot fit truly flush with the body. If they were formed as curves without the inset and there was an edge to fit them to, I am sure I could cut them to an exact fit with the pillars.

I will complete the model as is and get as close as I can but for any future models I'll do the windows another way.

In go the lights

It's taken quite a bit of cutting and filing to get the rear lights of the model Discovery 2 to the shape needed.

They are 3D printed but at such a tiny size the quality of the 3D print is too poor for them to fit properly. I have a single filament printer so the red and amber are printed separately and glued together.

They still need some work to finish them off. The plan is to coat them in a very thing coat of clear resin to give a gloss finish.

Dumper Pull

Our neighbour, Lee, called on Saturday to see if we had a winch to help move a dumper truck that had been left un-driven for such a long time that it had seized. It needed moving out of the way before his new kennels arrive.

He expected me to have an electric vehicle mounted winch. That's not what I have. It is surprising that is not one of the toys we have ever added to our Land Rover. The vehicle mounted winches look good but I personally think the manual portable winch is more versatile. It has done every job I've asked of it, with ease.

I have a Tirfor(r) type wire rope hoist with a pulling capacity of 2,400 kg. It normally lives in the back of the Discovery but I had the foresight to remove it before it went in for it's engine overhaul.

The dumper needed to be moved up a steep bank to get it close to the fence. This is so Lee could bring a lorry with a crane close enough to lift it over. We had to pull from the other side of the fence.

We used Lee's Range Rover to pull against. With a couple of easy pulls from different angles we were able to rotate the dumper and get it up the slope.

The manual wire rope hoist is slow but it feels under control at all stages because you only move the load an inch at a time.