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Vertical fiddleyard - it goes up-tiddly-up-up, it goes down-tiddly-down-down

Fen End Pit

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Well a couple of days off and a weekend's worth of construction and the frame of the vertical fiddleyard is now mounted on the wall. First up went the rack-mount server runners and then I hit the first problem, trying to fasten things accurately to masonary is a complete pain! Despite measuring accurately it is just impossible to actually drill a hole and get a rawl plug into exactly the right place particularly when you are trying to fix something to the resulting holes and have no margin for error. Once the runners were up of course the holes in the main moving framework wouldn't quite line up. I ended up having to enlarge the holes in the back of the square tube out to give about 1mm of adjustment so that the bolts would fit the bolt holes in the runners. Still up it went and it didn't fall off the wall overnight.

 

Saturday and the framework to support the bridge boards and the counter balance was fabricated and put up on the wall. I've had to cut away a section of the square tube on the sides which is where the bolt mechanism is going to fit. As the main moving section has to be proud of the wall to make space for the counter balance the sections of tube on the sides are 12.5mm further forward than the support frame which is fastened on the wall. I intend to try and make the bolt mechanism driven by some meety servos so I can unlock and lock the yard with a switch (or ultimately an electronic controller that also drives a stepping motor to raise or lower the yard, don't hold your breath for this though!)

 

Sunday was the difficult bit, taking the existing bridge boards and accurately cutting them shorter to fit the fact that the moving section is now 10cm longer than before. This involved trying to measure exactly how much length had to be removed when you couldn't fit the board in place and trying to saw 15mm MDF without damaging the C&L P4 track which was stuck to the top. Amazingly I was able to do this without causing too much damage. The result is that the yard framework now goes up and down and aligns with the bridge boards.

 

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From the door of the spare room the fiddleyard in the second from bottom track road.

 

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From the corner of the room the fiddleyard in the top most track.

 

Next step then is to make 6 lengths of board 110cm x 10cm to form the base for each track level, I intend to lay the track on the lowest level and then align each of the ends of the track on the bridge boards to suit. Once happy with that I'll then work my way up the yard. That's the theory, watch this space!

 

David

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Sidecar Racer
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Thats a nice bit of engineering David , I know all about trying to get accurate fixings in walls with

wall plugs , maybe an easier way would have been to fix some woood battens to the wall then

screw your framework to that , but then as you allready had your track laid this would have caused more problems with track alignment . But I do like the space saving nature of this .

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steve22

I had the same idea in my mind a couple of years ago for my shed layout. I even built a bit of baseboard with a slope down to where the cassettee array would be. This may sound mundane to many - it was quite an achievement for me, I mean to actually get round to doing it! I then realised that where I might place the up and down cassettes would be very difficult to access - and, quite simply, I couldn't visualise how to construct it anyway. NowI have seen what just might be... Thanks very much for showing us this, I really like it.

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Platform 1

Knockout solution! I thoroughly sympathise with the masonry drilling issue - breezeblock is a real pain!

 

Did you know you can get something called "Mis-drilled hole fixings"? (I have no link with this company) My local (independent) DIY shop sometimes has them, but never when you really need them ;-)

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Fen End Pit
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Knockout solution! I thoroughly sympathise with the masonry drilling issue - breezeblock is a real pain!Did you know you can get something called "Mis-drilled hole fixings"? (I have no link with this company) My local (independent) DIY shop sometimes has them, but never when you really need them ;-)

 

They are new to me, what a good idea!

David

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