Having a jig- excellent! Congrats.BuildingFriend wrote:Hey all- I got a jig finally We are using very light pieces now on the jig as we are confident in the build quality of the jig, but as it is a two piece tower jig, putting the top and bottom together is hard especially with the loctite CA glue I am using. I have been considering using wood glue and water combo or loctite and water combo to allow for more repositioning. In addition, sliding the tower off the jig is quite difficult- many bracings snapped in doing so- any advice to counteract that? Lastly, even though torsion isn't as big as a problem as bridges, I am currently using a Z design to cut mass and putting them in opposite directions so that four bracings meet at a single point. Should I use the Z design but in a parallel manner so that only two bracings meet at a single point? Using x's would conveniently take away that problem and increase torsion support but add on weight- so I am wondering as which of the options would be the best mass/strength decision. Thanks so much- we are selecting balsa pieces on BS now! (another homage to the forums)
It being really tricky to get top and bottom tower….sections together and lined up right; that’s one of the set of reasons I’ve noted, in a number of previous posts, for saying a 2-part approach is just not a good idea…. A reason I didn’t include in my list before is the problem you note of difficulty in getting the (narrow upper ‘chimney’ part, where the legs are close to vertical) off its jig. In a single truncated pyramid design (with a 10+ degree slant to the legs), and in jig for lower portion, with even more leg slant, having/getting ‘vertical clearance’ above ladder joints is easy; with near vertical legs, its very difficult, and repairing/replacing snapped braces from removal means additional glue/weight. In fact, what we ended up doing back in 2011/2012 to deal with this problem (when the tower rules meant you had to go with a 2-part design, unlike this year’s rules) was, for the upper part jig, creating a way to collapse the leg holding edges inward after chimney assembly; like this, showing one of the four jig plates that you have to hold the legs, and looking down from on top:
====== strip
C======+====Leg (JIG PLATE)
====== strip
Sorry for the crude drawing. C is the tower/jig center, Leg is the outer edge where the leg goes. + is a 3/32 x 3/32 bass stick. This jig was done in 3/32 plexi. First, the jig plates were cut to correct dimensions. Then, where the 3/32 stick is shown, did a straight cut from top to bottom, using a table saw with a blade that made a 3/32” wide cut. Then cut strips from the 3/32 plexi, ~3/4” wide, and glued them to the inside portion of the jig plate, so they created a slot for the outer portion to fit into. Tower assembly was done with the 3/32” sticks in place, and the outer portions of the jig plates pushed in so the sticks were tightly against the inner portions. When done, and ready to remove, pulled the sticks out the top, and pushed the outer portions of the jig plates in- then the chimney was free to lift off- no jig interferences with the bracing. A….royal pain in the tail to do the jig construction (have to be real careful to not get glue squishing into the slot area), but it worked.
Torsion (structure trying to twist) is actually a bigger problem in a tower that in a bridge, because of the much greater height. As I’ve said before, I don’t have a…’for sure’ engineering handle on optimal bracing designs, other than an Xs and ladders configuration, like I do on ladders and Xs and wood selection/specification to have sufficient buckling strength in the legs, using ladders and Xs for bracing. Still working on really figuring the optimal efficiency answer. You might want to go over the discussion on bracing systems in the 2011 towers forum that I posted a link to a few messages above. Then its build and test, and see if it works…. Doing that, it’ll be important to be able to see what breaks first- to understand the failure mode; the only two ways to do that is high speed (high frame rate) video, or a safety tower (a way to restrain the load block from above (when its being loaded from below), so that it can only fall…. like 1/8”. That way you can see what broke and how, without the tower being destroyed (when you can’t tell initial/primary damage from subsequent damage).
Hope this helps…