I have been in electronics all of my working life and now, in retirement, I’ve found time to indulge in my hobbies which include, Airplanes (building & flying), Machining (lathe & mill), Welding and now Metal-casting. So far I’ve built a propane furnace, a combined lift/pour tool and a pyrometer. To get started I’ve cast a load of ingots from scrap aluminium, plus a few test blocks to check the quality of the castings. I’m just starting a new project which combines aspects of all my hobbies; a remote controlled tracked aircraft tug to help get the plane in and out of the hanger, I need some help now that I’m old and decrepit. I’m hoping to cast about 120 caterpillar track links in aluminium. I’ll apologise in advance for the lots of idiotic questions that no doubt I’ll be asking on the forum
Welcome to the forum Jim. Tanks tracks have been on my agenda for 8 to 10 years now for a largish rov. Maybe one day I'll get around to it. Lol. Do you have a model of the track you are looking to cast??
Hi David, Yes, I have made a few 3D printed models of the track link to prove the idea, but I know that it is going to be a problem to cast. The rounded ends determine that the split line is through the centre of the radius, but that means there will be an undercut on the mating concave radii. I’ll try to upload some photos of the 3D printed links as soon as I find out how to do it. Im planning on casting the parts in green sand flasks, but I haven’t figured out how to get around the split line problem, any suggestions would be of help.
