For this update we have a real treat, we have a full break down of the making of the first prototype driver we had before the prototype production units.
We filmed this back in December at the MetMo Shed, where all manner of things are made, it is also not the tidiest of places so please forgive the clutter!
We go through every milling, drilling, turning and tapping process to make a driver from raw billets of metal so you can see the amount of work involved in making a driver. Although this one off was made by hand using manual machinery, the production ones will use industrial CNC machinery.
Without further ado, watch as a Driver is slowly formed in-front of your eyes and get a detailed view of each part. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did machining it.
Who’s this in the video? you may ask.
The man in the video is our master metal worker Geoff, and my inspiration to get into design and engineering. I've also left in some of his excellent commentary. He's a senior engineer with over 40 years of practical experience and a keen model engineering enthusiast in his spare time. Also, if you backed our Helico campaign you'll own some of his work, as he single-handedly hand finished every magnetic set!
There were some limitations with this prototype and we took some short cuts, mainly the hex drive bit as we didn’t have access to a broach and setting it up on the lathe was going to be a serious operation! So for this part we made a bit of a short cut and cut down a standard drive bit extender with the magnet built in. This was purely for prototyping purposes.
Total time for this build was around 42 hours spread over 6 days so we cut it down a bit!
