Cosmo Mod: FLYINGA2 Style

[CyberDruid]

Don't get excited...I'm not making a "Special" Mother's Day gift for the wife...I decided to cap the cylinder reservoirs with 1/2 spheres...and drill and tap them for plugs...such fun.


A simple fixture.


I'll adhere the spheres to the squares of ply.



Blue tape..gotta have it.


Bit for boring a flat to seat the Oring.


Some lovely 3M tape for doing this sort of mad work.


Sphere adhered...


I followed the Forstner bit with an 11.8 drill bit and then tapped it with a BSPP 1/4. I took a few tries as the material did not tap well.


They will go here.


Too much fun...


Taped a pair of tubes together to get an exact bevel (10 degrees in this case) on the mitre saw.


After trimming the center tube to the appropriate angle I laid out marks for the ports. They would have to be very close together...


I made sure I got them all drilled and tapped and counterbored for Oring fittings before I bothered with the final sanding and edging...suprisingly the 1/2" material tapped well...


The threads came out nice.



I did some sanding with the spindle sander to make the back plate follow the bend of the rails better and get it locked in to the receding angle.



The only way I could really check all three angles to see if they closed up was bay applying some clamping force...and the only way I could do that effectively was with a Spanish Windlass type contraption using some wire and blocks.

I gotta tell you I made it hard on myself my adding the jaunty angle and the canted center cylinder...getting the three tubes to line up to the front rack and the backplate took about 3 hours...and endless fiddling with the clamp set up...


Once I was satisfied that the three tubes would line up and needed to make some dividers to keep the return from cavitating the supply. I probably should have made them out of clear to be less obtrusive but on a whim I went with flourescent red-orange for the reservoirs with black fluid and black for the reservoir with red fluid.


Here's another place I made it hard...by having a bevel the tube will only align in one position on the backplate...the divider needs to run horizontal and split the ports...this required a lot more testing and fitting and some tiny marks to get right...


After much annoyance and several attempts I got the three cylinders adhered to the back plate. The water thin solvent I usually use was not doing the job...and I had to start over and re sand everything and use Weldon 26...a thick-bodied methylacrylate adhesive/solvent...not nearly as pretty and ALWAYS drips on something...so I protected the rig as I did the work.


Once the backplate had stopped screwing with me I was able to adjust the front rack and glue that to the tubes. This will stabilize the entire assembly.


Got the nose cones glued on easily..that was one of the few easy parts...I just set the unit vertical and plopped them on.

I did a sort of destruction test with a spare piece of tube and mistapped nosecone I had glued up with the water thin solvent..it would not seperate even after a severe beating on the bench...(on video lol).


So it needs to sit up for 24 hours and then I am going to pressure test it and see if it leaks.


There are some things I need to dial in a bit... the glue got out of hand and made some smudges on the backplate...nothing I can't do away with...but I want to make sure the res is functional before I doll it up any further.


Looks pretty good to me...