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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Cutting a large door out of rear skins

After talking with another builder (Thanks Keith) this weekend and a LOT of thought, I decided to cut the back skins and make a large removable door to access the electronics and insides of R2. I was going to use the little doors in the back but that just doesn't cut it when you need to diagnose a problem. And no matter what way you look at it, removing skins is not a quick easy task ... even with the modifications I did to the skin mounting blocks.

I used a dremel with reinforced cutting discs to carefully cut the door out. I used several layers of blue 3m tape on each side of my intended cut and it helped in visually guiding the blade. It actually came out very nice with clean pretty straight cuts.

I also came up with a neat way to attach the rear door using some modified leftover Daniel D. skin blocks. They will not be on hinges as that seems like overkill and I hear from other builders that's a massive amount of work. Plus I don't feel like spending much time in that area.

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