Firewall Part 1
I started mounting components to the firewall. There is a little bit of extra work for me to do since my firewall was pre-punched for a Rotax 914UL engine, but I’m installing a 915iS instead. This means I have some new holes to drill, some holes to cover up, and a few that I can use as-is. To locate the new holes to drill, I printed sections of CAD drawings from the build manual at 1:1 scale and used existing holes to line up the print. Luckily, nothing going on the firewall is especially sensitive to position tolerances, still I’m able to achieve better than 1mm accuracy.
To cover up holes I’m not using: for holes that are rivet-sized, I just install a rivet. For larger holes (e.g. there was a triple set of holes for the throttle, choke, and heater of the 914 engine), I cut a small repair doubler from 6061-T6 sheet stock, and then set it in place using a combination of rivets and JB Weld MinuteWeld epoxy.
One of the feet on the Rotax fuse box I acquired was broken. Rather than trashing the whole box (which is quite expensive to replace), I made a repair foot and attached with plastic epoxy. The repair foot is 3D-printed with the same carbon fiber polycarbonate filament I used for the wingtip. Although this filament is pretty strong as-is, I took the extra step of annealing the part, which helps bond the layers of plastic. After some experimentation, I found that annealing at 190°F for 40 minutes yielded the best results (increased strength, minimal deformation).
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well done !!…… but how much time (in hours!) did it take you to get that result ? // Would it not have been cheaper to buy the replacment box ? // I mean: labour is not for free….. // Greetings
Honestly the replacement foot was an easy part to make, probably all of 4 hours (including testing). I consulted Lockwood and LEAF and couldn’t find a way to buy just the plastic housing, the fusebox is sold as an assembly (https://www.leadingedgeairfoils.com/fuse-box-assembly.html) at a cost of almost $3000.. so fix rather than replace was definitely the more cost-effective solution here.