Drift Trikes... absolutely amazing on flat hard surfaces.
But if You've only got grass, well it chews it all up!
Let's do something about this!
[Music]
Furze drift, right now I think this is the best drift right design there is out there,
the petrol version, this is the electric one, has been copied many times and I haven't seen
a neater, more symmetrical design as the one I
did all them years ago.
Now, for today's challenge...
so we can slide around on grass and not chew it all up.
These wheels, very slippy, very good,
have sharp edges, what we need is something that resembles a ball, yes well you've seen
the thumbnail you know where this is going.
Right, and we're making these, okay we need
to make some metal balls or some metal spheres to put on our drift trike axles, Now we're
going to use a process called hydroforming, and I've been here before, this has been stuffed
up in the roof for nearly 10 years, so yes nearly 10 years ago I made a video on hydroforming.
Basically, get two flat bits of metal, weld around the edges, attach a normal Garden pressure
washer to it and expand it and pump it up.
Now, I didn't think you could do sphears because
I tried a circular one when all those years ago and as it goes up all the edges crease
up and I kind of thought, yeah I can't really do that, but if you get as close to the sphere
as possible before you start and then expand it, it basically, like turns a hexagon into
a circle, so that's what we need to do.
Right we need some templates, we need to cut some
stuff out.
okay there's two ways we can make our templates, we can do it manually with
Bits
of Paper and bits of wood or we can do it electronically, we can do it in CAD, or a
bit
of a mixture of the two.
Now essentially what we need to do, we need to make a sphere but
we need to kind of square it up a bit, so we
need to put some straight lines in our circle
like this, now you will lose a little bit of
circumference, obviously because this is a
little bit shorter, join these up with some lines and effectively the lengths of these
that will become the diameter of the bottom of your cone that will become the diameter
at the top of your cone and then you've got the distance in the middle.
What we're trying
to do is this... like this kind of uh, you know
like a weird bobbin sort of shape.
Now then
you can go online, there's all sorts of different cone calculators online, this one's by
craigrussell.co.UK put your bottom diameter in,
your top diameter and then the distance between
the two of them, obviously if you do a scale drawer and you can measure that.
So once you've
put those Dimensions into the calculator it gives you the radius of the bottom of your
profile and then the top and then basically you join the lines up and you'll end up with
something that looks a bit like this.
Now of course, I'm very lucky, I have a flash plasma
cutter, I have been to the barn I have cut this out on the plasma cutter and we have
ended up with these, very nice, but I know what
you're thinking...
I haven't got a flash plasma
cutter Colin, I don't use CAD software, how can
I get to this?
Saw this on YouTube Ron Covell
or conavel I don't know what his name is, this
is our pretend code there is our bottom diameter
there is our top diameter it is spaced out in the distance that we need to be.
this is
our part of that Circle which is the top bit, you then essentially would put this on a flat
piece of card place it down Mark in an edge where you start and then you basically roll
it around, tracing where you want to be and that will give you exactly the same pattern
as this and then you can cut it out with an angle grinder, which is possible, obviously
it's not as good as this, but you'll get the same result.
Right let's go and put these through
the slip roller bend them into cones, I've got the middle band, I've got the top pieces,
let's go TIG welding.
Now, I'm using 1.5 mil stainless because I don't want to be too thin, because obviously
it'll Dent like hell, but it'd be interesting to know how it hydroforms because you know
stainless is pretty hard stuff, so is this going to stretch and expand or is
it going
to be a little bit too thick?
We shall see.
beautiful
[Music]
Right that's got this sorted this end.
Absolutely, perfect probably the best cone thing I've ever welded up, this side
something
not quite right, I don't know whether I've put the numbers in the computer wrong or whatever,
but we had a bit of a gap, now I've sorted that out, I've shoved it up, this is arguably
our experimental one.
we've got a few questions to answer, is 1.5 mil stainless too thick?
will
the pressure washer pump it up and hydroform it properly or is it just gonna kind of just
go a bit and a little bit wrong?
now after that if it all does work this end, these little
Marks here, that's what I'm going to drill holes for this then attach onto a go-kart
axle.
Now this plate on the end is three mil thick, it's a bit thicker possibly could be
thicker than that if that doesn't Bend, which we hope it doesn't when we bolt it on.
Is it
going to be Central or we're going to end up with a wobbly wheel because if we do that's
just as bad as leaving it like this.
Right but before that what are my kids doing...
[Music]
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all right, let's do some
hydroforming [Music] the pressure washer is attached by union with this sorted it's
time to get everything connected up ready to hydroform.
began to build our bobbin shaped piece of stainless steel slowly began become a sphere
but you know what, that is pretty good that!
There's a couple of little high spots and
stuff but only just, I reattaches the pressure washer to give it one last more pressurization
and try tapping the high spots to see if I could affect it this didn't work and then
it just fell over and then it got wet.
OK, Colin is a happy person, 1.5 mil stainless
will hydroform very nicely.
now this top bit has done an absolutely perfect job the bit
where the bottom where I had the slight issue with the template or something it's not as
perfect circle as the other side.
now the things that we need to learn from this is the plate
that was going to attach onto the axle that has bent slightly, there is a slight bit of
a curve to it so another idea we'll get this template which welded to the middle bit perfectly,
we'll do another two of them so we'll make it symmetrical, put a lid on the top of it,
we won't bother with a little axle thing straight away, we'll hydroform it make a perfect bowl
and then afterwards we'll drill out a hole weld the next bit in flat and then we'll be
able to poke it through, get it right and then
kind of balance it so it's definitely in the
center so we haven't got a wobbly wheel yes so I set about putting together my second
bobbin and this time I paid extra attention to make sure the seams butted up and lined
up absolutely perfect and also when I welded them together rather than welding them with
filler Rod I kind of melted them into each other which gives like a flatter more neat
and consistent weld.
right, let's see if this makes a difference [Music]
ah don't blink [Music] that's pretty good, I'm pleased with that, super Round Top super
and bottom, it's a little bit flat in the middle
but I think if we make it generally a little
bit bigger, it puts more pressure, more surface area basically, it's a bit like Hydraulics
it's
got a bit more force and it might have enough to just creep that middle bit round a little
bit and make it into a perfect ball.
now then to attach this to an axle, because I've made
a slight oversight!
okay we've got our go-kart axle Mount, but of course it's got studs on
it and if we drill holes in here and put that there the nuts end up inside the ball that's
not ideal so to get around this I've got a bit of pipe and I've welded a little cap end
on it with the studs in there's holes so we can get to those studs and then we're going
to weld that on the end of our ball, very nice.
the next time Hydroforming, we've got this... it's
bigger but not only that these are all equal 14 centimeters 14 centimeters 14 centimeters
14 centimeters 14 centimeters it's all as equal as it possibly can be.
right come on
let you be the one [Music]
That is perfect.
why that's no moon!
That is exactly how I wanted this to turn out the first time, absolutely brilliant,
perfectly consistent Circle right across its Arc, looks
amazing!
Right, now before we go and make another one of these, I want to get the axle thing
set up on it and then also we can try and balance it and make sure it's as true as possible.
Now, on the end of this circle here, there's this little divot feature, because the plasma
cutter at the farm has its ability to like center punch the material so it doesn't cut
all the way through it just looks like a little Half Moon shaped thing at the surface very
useful so we can drill from the center of that and that's dead in the center of that
Circle and obviously the hole I drilled to fill it was also in the center of that Circle
so we should move too far off we're just lining them up but if we can kind of clamp them in
between something and then spin it and see if we've got any wobbling and then if there
is then we can kind of move the thing around and kind of correct it in that way right let's
get that done look at it I am very pleased man I woke up early the other day wondering
what would make me happy I want to live a life that's Justified I want to play video
games
[Music] all I got is [Music] right that's pretty good I'm happy with that there's a
slight High spot where the world is but I don't think I'm gonna be able to do much about
that and it's certainly no worse than the plastic sleeves that you bash over the tires
so I think I'll Whip another one up and then we've got two excellent I think I've only
got one glove on [Music] March [Applause] [Music]
ah there we have two perfectly formed balls!
haha!
right, very pleased with them, excellent now
if you want to know more about hydraforming of course you can go and re-watch the video
I did all those years ago, there's also a guy
called Connor Holland who has done exactly
the same things like this but he's also done spheres starting from slightly different patterns
I'll link him in the description and of course sheet metal work Ron Covell like I said at
the beginning that's where I got how you can do all the patterns and stuff without using
your computer, he is a master too also linked in the description, now then I think the drift
trike should match this so I'm going to make a full stainless steel drift right so we can
shine and buff the whole thing up and it looks absolutely beautiful right Build montage huh!
[Music]
[Applause]
On wet grass you've literally have no grip and then it'll find a bit of dry and then
it'll grip up.
sometimes it'll barely move.
Oh yeah the wheels are smoking!
I'm doing a burn out on
a drift trike!
The lack of suspension is definitly hurting my bum!
oh yes this thing does exactly what I wanted
it to do, yeah it's been really good the axles haven't been I was a little bit worried about
that the hydroform balls have been absolutely Flawless, they've not dented they've not come
apart
it's all been good and of course they will slide around on grass without making a complete
mess of it now of course you've seen how I've made this I have got other drift trikes on
my channel, I've got an electric one and I've got one that you can make without using any
weld or anything the whole thing's just bolted together bent and just put together with really
simple tools, so check that out give a subscribe it's a lovely thing to do, right I'll see
you in
the next project where I get weightless [Music]