After about 3-4 hours each night for two months I've been researching components, designing, measuring my jeep, running analysis, and meeting with vendors and subcontractors, I finally get to make something this weekend...my welding fixture!
I ordered waterjet and machined parts yesterday and we're planning on assembling it Friday. This fixture cost me in excess of $400 to make but it will be worth it. Basically it is a CNC waterjet top plate, with CNC holders bolted to it in specific places. Each holder or pair of holders has tapped holes on several faces. All of our parts will have 1/4" holes in them that we will use to bolt all of the parts to the fixture in precise orientations. Finally, we'll weld both sides of the bumper. All of this will allow us to fight heat warpage and really speed up the assembly & layout process, as well as make repeatability a non-issue.
Today I took the day off of my day job to work on part drawings a bit, so hopefully I can order them tomorrow and start building the bumper early next week! I've basically got 2 weeks from today to get it finished and it is going to take a miracle to get all the ducks in a row to make it happen, but we're going to try our very best. I've pretty much devoted every spare minute to this project for two months and I don't want to see it come up short now. Anyway, here are the useless teaser pictures.
