Originally Posted by
cudak888
Curiously, if the inner and outer plates were laser cut in advance, would it make the overall build any easier?
I'm guessing the plates, though time consuming, aren't anywhere near as big a pain as opening and lengthening the shifter shaft.
-Kurt
You guess right! The push rod was probably the hardest part. I did it with the mill, because it was solid stainless steel. It was difficult even to fixture up, with tons of V-blocks and things. Truth be told, I broke some tooling doing it.
Finished it with a lot of hand filing. Huge pain! But Herse used hollow tubing for this. The problem with me doing that is, I can't find any in conveniently telescoping sizes. The original Herse tubing brazed to the frame was 10x10mm outside and 7x7mm inside (1.5mm wall). The tubing for the push rod was 7x7 outside with a 1mm wall. He just used a file to break through a corner and left it at that. Easy peasy, if you can find the right tubing. Closest I've come is 10x10x1mm wall and an 8mm solid square bar. But that's still going to be a pain to open up and slot.
I was thinking about getting the cage laser or waterjet cut. Originally that was my plan, before this damn plague. I still plan to at least draw up the plates in Fusion 360 and submit them to Xometry to see how much it will cost to get them cut. I welcome suggestions of where else to go for laser or waterjet work, though! Anything would be helpful.