I came to the open house about a month ago, and talked to some people there about my camper project. Now that I am ready to join as a member I wanted to put my project in the forums. So I built a bike camper in Sherbrooke QC, and toured with it and my ebike to Guelph, ON. A total of not far from 1000 kms in total. It was quite the learning experience! Now I have moved to Vancouver with the intention of building the campers to sell to the awesome cyclist community here. The first one I built I guess I could call my prototype 0.5 because it really was pretty far from
my idea for it.
I uploaded a picture of 0.5, I hope it shows up well in the forums here?
proto 1.0 which I hope to build at VHS will be very similar in shape to the one you see, and the overall dimensions will be similarish too approx 32" wide by about 7 1/2 feet long.
The key is being able to cut the coroplast in the laser cutter. I hand cut all the panels in 0.5 and… well… lets just say that my hand cutting skills arent up to snuff. The lines werent nearly straight enough to make it look professional for sale for sure.
If any of you want to discuss this I would be more then happy to chat! If people want more details I can do another post in this topic with more details of my vision too.
Thanks a lot peeps! you’re awesome!
Mike
Hi Arrgh, I would love to use the CNC if it would work! I also really like coroplast for its cheapness and lightness. Having to use other more expensive products simply because they are laser cuttable isnt really the best. Again, the CNC table you guys have at VHS how big a sheet can it cut?
excellent, thank you Arrgh! Do you have any idea when I might be able to get trained on the CNC? I think it will likely be the better option for me as there isnt such a limitation on the materials on that as there is with the laser. I am still contemplating other plastics as they MIGHT have characteristics that would be more beneficial for me than coroplast. (thinness being a big consideration of course)
It might be interesting to check out using wood for the interior actually! Like a really thin plywood. Could look a lot better for the interior then a solid white plastic.
Mike
There’s also the option of laser cutting stencils out of ply, double-sided taping them to your coroplast, and cutting around them with a sharp olfa. I’ve gotten very clean, precise cuts of of coroplast this way. As a bonus, you’re not really limited by size; break your stencil pattern up into pieces and tape them together and you can go as big as you want.
I really like that idea of using the dremel, this way I would never risk cutting into the stencil. If I am cutting with a sharp knife along the stencil it would be pretty easy to cut into the stencil. I know when I was cutting the coroplast in 0.5 I had to lean into the knife a bit to get through. Maybe it was because the blade I was using was crappy though.
When I was building my skin and frame canoe, I bought a tool that was like a Xacto knife, but you plugged it in and the blade headed up. It was great for cutting through the ballistic nylon. Maybe it would work for chloroplast too?
Apparently, it’s just called a hot knife (which meant something totally different when I was in college)
Hey there Sparky/Mike. I am interested in your bike trailer plan. Is it possible that we had met this summer at Trout lake?
Let me know how far you are getting with it.
Leon Leonmac007@gmail.com
