Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Poptop working

My poptop is built almost exactly to per-plan spec; I "upgraded" by using SS316 hardware whereever possible.   I had built some of the parts at my old house, but had let myself get stalled trying to figure out how to produce the slight angle that the plastic pieces were supposed to have.   Well after some eyeballing and playing around with a protractor, I finally settled on 8 degrees as the proper offset so that the tracks would fit well against my poptop.  Here is what that looked like, with the jib track slide attached:


Producing four such blocks that are completely identical seemed to be a challenge, but it only took two tries.   (Cutting UHMW plastic with the tablesaw makes the garage smell like I'm burning candles...)  The poptop appears to be now fully operational; this is just with only a few screws to hold the tracks in place):


It slides pretty easily already but I think it will get easier once it is installed for the final time and I add some grease to the slides (and some stop-screws to keep the tracks from sliding off the end).   Here is an inside view when closed:


Lastly, my hardware collection:


I may spend time later rounding off the sharp edges and polishing the aluminum....but for now this job is done, time to move on to the next thing.

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