Mounting the skins to the frame had been a task I'd thought about for a long while. The main objectives for my mounting solution were (in no particular order)
2. skins need to be easily removable.
5. mounting points should not be visible from the outside.
1. attaching/removing skins should take very little time.
3. skins need to fit tight to avoid any rattles/vibrations.
4. it had to be cheap.
I'd seen some solutions where the skins are glued down. This works, but removal and reattaching isn't easy, so that option is out. Other simply screw both the inner and outer skins to the frame rings and then the screw heads are painted to suit the skins. Some even fill in the drive slot. This is effective and straight forward, but drilling and tapping the .25" frame rings wasn't really desirable and I needed something a little more concealed. Cutsom made skins snaps using male and female HDPE blocks is a great solution introduced by Daren Murrer. I really liked the idea, but the TCO was too high.
Nothing I found checked all of my boxes, so it was off to the drawing board. The solution was some strategically placed stand-offs on the frame rings, some M3 screws and wingnuts, a few beers and voilà! Problem solved.
First, I cut some stand-offs out of HDPE. I then located points on the frame where these could be mounted without interfering with anything else that needs to attach to either the frame or the skins. The stand-offs were then temporarily mounted and mounting holes were drilled through the frame and into the stand-offs. The holes were countersunk and self-tappers were used to keep the stand-offs in place.
Here's a close-up of the front stand-off mounted. That's it between the round frame post and the utility arm carrier.
The inner skins were then held in place with clamps and holes were back-drilled through the stand-offs into the skins. The skins were also countersunk so the mounting screws could sit flush beneath the outer skin.
The prep work is all done. To hang the skins, I fed M3 35mm screws through the skin and secured them with wingnuts.
In the pic shown above, the utility arm outer skin panel neatly sticks in place with some super-tacky double-sided tape to hide the screw head. The other screws are also positioned so that other panels hide them away.
At the time of this posting, the front skins are held on at two points and the rear skins at three. The rears wont need any more apart from the ends behind the shoulders and ankles. The fronts will need another one towards the bottom and then some more around the shoulders and ankles. Using screws behind the shoulders wont work because access to a wingnut is denied because of the shoulder mounting plate. I've got 4 or 5 ideas of how to fix this problem, but there's still a bit of refining to do on those and it's a good topic for a whole new blog post...
2. skins need to be easily removable.
5. mounting points should not be visible from the outside.
1. attaching/removing skins should take very little time.
3. skins need to fit tight to avoid any rattles/vibrations.
4. it had to be cheap.
I'd seen some solutions where the skins are glued down. This works, but removal and reattaching isn't easy, so that option is out. Other simply screw both the inner and outer skins to the frame rings and then the screw heads are painted to suit the skins. Some even fill in the drive slot. This is effective and straight forward, but drilling and tapping the .25" frame rings wasn't really desirable and I needed something a little more concealed. Cutsom made skins snaps using male and female HDPE blocks is a great solution introduced by Daren Murrer. I really liked the idea, but the TCO was too high.
Nothing I found checked all of my boxes, so it was off to the drawing board. The solution was some strategically placed stand-offs on the frame rings, some M3 screws and wingnuts, a few beers and voilà! Problem solved.
Here's a close-up of the front stand-off mounted. That's it between the round frame post and the utility arm carrier.
The inner skins were then held in place with clamps and holes were back-drilled through the stand-offs into the skins. The skins were also countersunk so the mounting screws could sit flush beneath the outer skin.
The prep work is all done. To hang the skins, I fed M3 35mm screws through the skin and secured them with wingnuts.
At the time of this posting, the front skins are held on at two points and the rear skins at three. The rears wont need any more apart from the ends behind the shoulders and ankles. The fronts will need another one towards the bottom and then some more around the shoulders and ankles. Using screws behind the shoulders wont work because access to a wingnut is denied because of the shoulder mounting plate. I've got 4 or 5 ideas of how to fix this problem, but there's still a bit of refining to do on those and it's a good topic for a whole new blog post...
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