This is what happens if your girlfriend is nice and buys you all pizza, and then you repay her by throwing rocks at her and poking her with sticks while she eats.
Left: Before Right: After
After many design revisions and corrections, some on purpose, some due to miscommunication, the tower has started going up. The three main poles have been sunk and mounted, and as of first thing tomorrow morning, the welding begins.
We just got back from seeing The Fast And The Furious. We both enjoyed it for sure… but… I have to admit that having owned a couple of truly fast vehicles (sub 4 second 0-60mph, 210+ mph top), I can't really take clown cars like that very seriously. Oh, and that reminds me… we stripped my trike's engine of its fuel injection system in preparation for a blower. Say hello to 750 HP! Zero to sixty in four seconds not fast enough for you? I'm shooting for something closer to two seconds. Any import racer that feels like racing me for pink slips, just let me know.
The diagram below compares potential structural failure due to extreme shearing forces. This is the type of force that would be experienced by a suspension tower. Twisting and other directions are a minor risk, but outside of it simply falling over at the base, shearing is the single largest failure risk that I can think of:
The left design shows the support plates mounted horizontally. For the tower to shear, no actual damage needs to be done to the plates other than a small amount of bending in the sheet metal. Very little force is required to achieve this, especially in smaller gauges. The plates themselves offer very little actual strength to the structure (although they do make convenient steps).
The right design shows the plates mounted horizontally. For the tower to shear, the plates actually need to be fully TORN in half, or have their weld points DESTROYED. It would take easily hundreds of times more force to achieve this than the horizontal mounting.
So if you're building a tower, decide how literal you want your “suicide suspensions” to be!!!
1. Mr. Blair wants to film a new documentary (sort of like the ear scalpelling we shot for BMEradio). We're looking for someone in the Toronto area who is looking for either a tongue splitting or a 8mm dermal punch. You will need to be available over an extended time so we can document healing and followup, so you really do need to be in the Toronto area. If you are interested, contact Blair by telephone. His number is on his IAM page.
2. Just watched Bamboozled… I know it got mixed and often very negative reviews (and I think I've even seen some unhappy comments about it here on IAM), so I wasn't really sure what to expect going in. However, I really enjoyed it, if “enjoyed” is the right word. Maybe in the same sort of way I enjoyed Once Were Warriors. It's an important movie.
3. Scanned a few more photos from Jamaica:
4. Almost 4AM, I guess I should go to bed.
