Best way to make gussets?

[GeeTwo]

If a drill press is your only tool, you can use 0.1" perf board as a template, at least for right angles (you can also use it for 37/53 degree angles, you know a 3-4-5 right triangle). Mark the holes you're going to drill, clamp, and match drill 1/16" pilot holes using the perf board, remove the template, then follow up with your rivet/bolt size. I've also used this trick for laying out control panels and LED arrays - nice even spacing with little fuss.

[JamesBrown]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

If a drill press is your only tool, you can use 0.1" perf board as a template, at least for right angles (you can also use it for 37/53 degree angles, you know a 3-4-5 right triangle). Mark the holes you're going to drill, clamp, and match drill 1/16" pilot holes using the perf board, remove the template, then follow up with your rivet/bolt size. I've also used this trick for laying out control panels and LED arrays - nice even spacing with little fuss.

Clever, definitely adding this to my bag of tricks.

[matthewdenny]

We use CAD, dial calipers, a band saw, center punch, and drill press. It is not a fast process, but it is successful about ~70% of the time for simple parts like this, and give our students some good experiance.

[Jon Stratis]

This is, in my opinion, one of the big drawbacks of pre-machined holes in parts. It's rather time consuming to get everything to lineup properly when you have to make anything custom to interface with it. It's probably the biggest reason my team has moved away from pre-machined holes. Everything we use is simple extrusion, then you just clamp your gusset on it, drill a couple holes through both pieces at the same time, and bolt/pop rivet it in place. Your holes always line up that way, and if you want a nice clean look you just need to properly mark your spacing on the top piece before you drill.

[evanperryg]

We get some free waterjetting through one of our main sponsors, Caterpillar. However, the slow turnaround time for waterjet can be very limiting. We recently got a very simple (and very unforgiving) tabletop sheet router, for doing quick mockups and prototypes. It's very sensitive to calibration, and basically everything else, and it isn't nearly as accurate as waterjetting. However, it's nice to be able to whip up a custom gusset out of MDF in a matter of 10 minutes, to make sure it fits the way it should.

[Gdeaver]

We have been cutting .125 Al 6061T6 on the X-Carve. It does take some dialing in to cut AL. We need to do some mods to be able to cut faster or with more precision. For gussets it's fine. For real precision we need to go to true cam software. Something to master after the season.

[Nebster]

Originally Posted by Gdeaver

We have been cutting .125 Al 6061T6 on the X-Carve. It does take some dialing in to cut AL. We need to do some mods to be able to cut faster or with more precision. For gussets it's fine. For real precision we need to go to true cam software. Something to master after the season.

Good to know. My team recently won a grant for the 1000x1000 x-carve, it just came in and we haven't assembled it yet. Did you upgrade the router that came with it? Our main shop mentor seems to think it will not cut aluminum well enough even for gussets and things.

[jwfoss]

In a pinch I will work with the students to print a part 1:1 scale and use it as a direct template. Tape it to the part, use a punch to mark the holes and then head to the drill press and bandsaw.

[jkelleyrtp]

Originally Posted by Nebster

Good to know. My team recently won a grant for the 1000x1000 x-carve, it just came in and we haven't assembled it yet. Did you upgrade the router that came with it? Our main shop mentor seems to think it will not cut aluminum well enough even for gussets and things.

I'm working on a white paper for the end of build season about the xcarve. So far, it has cut everything on our robot. Bellypan, gussets, tube, etc

[roystur44]

Mcmaster Carr has a nice set of inexpensive brackets you can buy that can work out for you.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#framing-bra...ctors/=112dxpw


A tool that is a great thing to have is a cleco tool. It's a temporary hole clamp used to align parts when we match drill.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#=112dz4u

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by roystur44

A tool that is a great thing to have is a cleco tool. It's a temporay hole clamp used to align parts when we match drill.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#=112dz4u

+1 to Cleco Tools! We have three Cleco Pliers and hundreds of Clecos. Everything we assemble gets cleco-ed before being riveted together.

-Mike

[asid61]

Thanks for the ideas! We have a sheet metal sponsor, but they do not like to do things other than 90* angles for the sides of gussets, so I was hoping there was a quick way to make them by hand. They also only do 1-2 big orders for us each season as it's faster for them to do that than a bunch of orders for 4-8 gussets each.

Normaly we do what Mrnoble said (print, drill, cut) but the paper peels sometimes, and it tends to be rather slow if we need to make 16 or 30 gussets.

[jijiglobe]

In the case of many gussets, you just need to make sure the holes line up. you can actually accomplish this by clamping the two parts you want to attach together, throwing them on a drill press, and going through. By doing this you can attach two pieces without spending basically any time lining up holes.

[OccamzRazor]

If you have no waterjet or laser access we have used this engraving tool to trace the edges of the part from a drawing to transfer it to the surface of the metal:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Dremel-12...0-01/100394725

It works well if you place a drawing onto the metal sheet and trace around it or make a straightedge with a piece of scrap. Takes a minute or so to trace the outline and it is usually accurate enough to make one to scale properly. We learned our lesson last year and match drill everything that is not the proper gusset from VexPro. We line up one hole, stick a rivet in with the gun, and then drill the rest of the pattern.

[Michael Hill]

We use a sheet metal shear to cut triangles. Clamp, drill, cleco, rivet.