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Today I drove one and a half hours for "map box day". My buddy Steve is
building a Kitfox and we both are at about the same stage in the game.
We are both finishing up painting the major pieces. We both want a map
box in our panel so we decided to design our own and fabricate it out of
.025 aluminum sheet. |
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The first thing I did was
to design the box and lay out the dimensions on poster board. The map
box is 6" wide and 10.5" deep by 2.5" high. The two parallel lines you
see drawn on the yellow poster board is 1/8" and allows for the radius
in the bend.
As you can see, I
have a left side, bottom, right side, top, and small flange. I also have
a back piece on this template but later we ended up cutting it off
because we couldn't get that part of the box into the brake to bend it. |
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Next I traced the template
onto the .025 aluminum sheet. |
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Of course we are making two
of them so I traced it twice. |
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Here Steve has bent most of
the bends on the box. Notice the front side has flanges for mounting to
the panel. In this picture, we just need to bend the top over. |
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Here is the back end of the
completed box. As I mentioned, we cut off the tab we were going to use
for the back and made a separate back piece that will rivet to the box. |
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This is looking at the box
from the front. These are the mounting tabs. You can see the flange on
the top that bend over the left side to complete the box. Four rivets in
there and it's done!
Before I rivet it closed though, I
will glue fabric to the inside. |
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While I was working on the
aluminum and cutting out the templates, Steve used his Bridgeport to cut
out the opening for the map box.
I cut all the other
square holes myself with a nibler. Because I did it by hand, the square holes are not
absolutely perfect
(almost though!). In this case it is okay that they are not perfect
because the faceplate of each
instrument will cover the hole and you will only see the faceplate and not
the hole.
The hole for the
map box has to be perfect though since there is no instrument covering
the hole. This is why we used the Bridgeport-Steve cut out an absolutely
perfect hole. |
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Not only did Steve cut a
perfect hole in the panel, he also cut out a perfect door! In this
photo, it obviously is not riveted together yet so I am holding the door
and the hinge.
This map box is
going to look awesome!! |