my truck camper

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Re: my truck camper

Postby Philip » Wed Nov 23, 2016 5:23 pm

Now during the time I was waiting for the epoxy to set. I went to putting together the parts I had been waiting on to redo my power supply.

In this pic I had already installed the power switch, fuse holder, dimmer switch.

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In this pic it shows the inside layout. By the time I knocked off I had all the wiring done inside the box. I just need to pickup some AGC 5 glass fuses then I can power it up to find the wires I need to use for power out to the cutter.

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Last edited by Philip on Sun May 06, 2018 1:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: my truck camper

Postby Philip » Wed Nov 23, 2016 5:32 pm

On the foam I did today. Here is a hint I have not seen posted on here in any builds. I could have taken a lot of time and tried to measure out all the angles and stuff. A faster way I have used many times in making gaskets in automotive works. I layed the foam on top of the wall section. Then I took a board and layed on top of the foam. I took a large rubber hammer and hit the board around all framing inside the wall. That compressed the foam only on the wall framing. Here is a pic.

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Then I used a T-square to mark cut lines on the foam. Seeing as how I was only cutting 3/4". I just used a box cuter. Total time for cutting out the foam on that wall was about 30 minutes.
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Re: my truck camper

Postby OP827 » Wed Nov 23, 2016 5:38 pm

Philip wrote:
OP827 wrote:Philip, the hot wire foam cutting flash with wood looks pretty good and flat from here.
I may steel the idea for the future. Anything you recommend I should be watching for when doing the cut, any lessons learned?
Thanks,
Oleg


You need to maintain a steady speed threw the cut. If you slow down it will leave a divot. If you look at the foam in the pic any dark lines in it was a slow down point.

A good power supply helps. My charger only supplied 12 volts with maybe one amp. There wasn't enough resistance to fully turn on my charger. It was only giving me voltage and no amperage. So it was slow cutting. My power supply that died was giving me three amp's.

Rig a spring up on the cutter wire to hold tension. I didn't on that adjustable setup I made. NI-chrome wires stretches a lot when hot even at the low amp's I was feeding it. With the wire tight at the start of the cut. By the end of a cut the center of the wire was about 2" behind in the center of the span. A larger power source would have helped there. If I slowed down to keep the wire straight it caused divots on the outer edges.

It was a flush cut with top of wood. On the alumin ears I added to the clamp. I put a notch just deep enough in the rounded corner to just hold the wire in position. I'll get a better pic of the working end tomorrow. I wasn't quite done with it when I took that one.


Thanks for the tips and I let me think of it a second here. What is needed is more power or heat to be produced in the wire. I do not know which diameter your Ni-Cr wire is, but with the same voltage for the same length and diameter, the steel MIG wire has less resistance Ω so it will be hotter vs. Ni-Cr, so the cut could be quicker.

My hunch here is really the cutting temperature required for XPS is quite low while Ni-Cr wire is usually used with higher temperatures. Steel would be stable and durable for a long time for this kind of cut. The mig steel wire I was using was slighly turning dark, and was never needed to be glowing hot. It is not my idea, I just copied it, the credit of the tip for using the mig wire and manual charger belongs to this forum member ghcoe, who documented quite well how he used charger and mig wire for his foamie #1 build (http://www.tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?t=54099) . Cheers, you are doing a very nice work on your trailer!
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Re: my truck camper

Postby OP827 » Wed Nov 23, 2016 5:52 pm

Philip wrote:OP here is the close up pic's of the cutter. At the position I have the wire notched in. You need to hold the clamp at a 45 degree angle to the foam your cutting.

In this pic you can see I just wrapped the Ni-chrome around that machine screw. The clip is just to keep the end from unwinding.


This is a clever cutter design for this shaving task, I like that! Now I see why the 12V manual charger would not have enough voltage to make the wire hotter. your Ni-Cr wire looks quite thinner than a common steel MIG wire. Thanks for sharing your build methods here. May I ask you whether you checked the surface, after the foam was cut flash with frame, with a long straight edge and was is flat, how good was it? I am considering using this method too.. It could be simplier than planing the foam.

Another question on epoxy gluep you posted above, did you thicken your epoxy to fix it to ply with micro balloons of other filler?

Thanks,
Oleg
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Re: my truck camper

Postby Philip » Wed Nov 23, 2016 6:15 pm

OP827 wrote:
Philip wrote:OP here is the close up pic's of the cutter. At the position I have the wire notched in. You need to hold the clamp at a 45 degree angle to the foam your cutting.

In this pic you can see I just wrapped the Ni-chrome around that machine screw. The clip is just to keep the end from unwinding.


This is a clever cutter design for this shaving task, I like that! Now I see why the 12V manual charger would not have enough voltage to make the wire hotter. your Ni-Cr wire looks quite thinner than a common steel MIG wire. Thanks for sharing your build methods here. May I ask you whether you checked the surface, after the foam was cut flash with frame, with a long straight edge and was is flat, how good was it? I am considering using this method too.. It could be simplier than planing the foam.

Another question on epoxy gluep you posted above, did you thicken your epoxy to fix it to ply with micro balloons of other filler?

Thanks,
Oleg


The Ni-chrome I am using is .030" size. My charger is a larger one. It needs a battery hooked to it to go into charge mode. The Ni-chrome just didn't have to correct resistence a battery would have to turn on the full charge circuits. A cheap small charger with little built in controls might do it. I didn't have one to try. The longer the wire the more power you need. I was cutting a little over 15" wide on that frame work.

I was going to try mig wire. The wire I had wouldn't wrap tight around the machine screws. I thought about a wire terminal for connections. then I just pitched the idea and went back to Ni-chrome.

the Ni-chrome I have cost $3. for 25' plus $1.25 for shipping. To me its not worth trying to play to much with mig wire.

I did throw a straight edge across the frame work. No high spots above the frame. The wire did dip down in the middle a small amount on a couple of panels. Nothing I would worry about.

I am using Total boat epoxy. Of all the epoxy's on the market. It has the highest viscosity of all the brands on the market. I didn't need to thicken it. This stuff is thick enough you can do uphill layouts if you want. That's one of the reasons I picked this brand. I am sure I will have some vertical layouts some where during this build.

When I was epoxying those panels. I threw down a heavy coat. It took about 10 minutes to coat one panel. I went back over and hit the dry looking spots then dropped the foam into the epoxy and weighted it down.
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Re: my truck camper

Postby OP827 » Thu Nov 24, 2016 1:00 pm

Thanks, it works and it looks great. I did not know about such epoxy. I only used ecopoxy that I did not like, then west and then east system with fillers as needed.
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Re: my truck camper

Postby Philip » Thu Nov 24, 2016 1:58 pm

West is the thinnest of epoxy's. East is 2nd in the list. When I was talking to my glass guy we talked long and hard about layups, application, vertical layups. He told me for a beginner a thicker epoxy is a lot more forgiving. It might take a little more effort to get full saturation of the glass but it won't run out of the glass like the thinner epoxy's do. Also on a vertical the glass doesn't slide around like a thinner resin would. In my vertical corners I was doing I didn't do any touchup after the glass was layed in. I left it alone to test vertical run out of the resin. In those corner sections I noticed very little resin runoff. The glass didn't slide down before resin setup.

A gallon of this thicker stuff might not have the coverage of a thinner epoxy. For what I am doing so far I prefer the thicker epoxy. West system on amazon is $175 a gallon give a take a little. Plus pumps. The total boat is $120 with pumps. With the amount of resin this project is going to eat up. That $50 a gallon difference will add up fast.
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Re: my truck camper

Postby Philip » Fri Nov 25, 2016 6:29 pm

Yesterday I installed the inner ply on the wall. This morning I routed off the excess ply.

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I flipped the wall over and sanded it with a D/A and 180 grit paper to remove layout lines and so on.

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I then used a tack cloth to remove all sanding dust. I layed out glass and cut to rough size and epoxied it down.

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Tomorrow I am going to sand it down with the D/A and put another coat of resin on it.
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Re: my truck camper

Postby Philip » Sat Nov 26, 2016 12:48 pm

This morning I sanded off the panel with 180 sand paper. Then the second coat of epoxy went on.


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On this coat I tried a trick of using a putty knife to spread the epoxy. I found a couple of videos on U tube showing that. On a first layup I didn't have much luck with a putty knife. It would move the glass around to much with the thick epoxy I am using. So I used a paint brush on the first layup. For a second layup on a flat panel the knife worked good. I used a 8" drywall knife I had laying around.

BTW I could have skipped the second coat if I had wanted to. After sand out the small areas I had to retouch I could have skipped and used automotive spot putty to fill them with on final finish work.
Last edited by Philip on Sun May 06, 2018 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: my truck camper

Postby Philip » Mon Nov 28, 2016 2:23 pm

Yesterday I flipped the base over to paint the bottom side. It was do that or paint it on a creeper. :lol:

Today I put down two coats of oil base paint.

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Now I have to wait till it drys good. Then flip it over and install the wall I have finished.

Now for the members wondering why I didn't paint all the way to the edge. I will be running glass over the corners to the bottom when I do the wall installs. I don't want to glass over paint. I'll just spray the over run areas when I paint the outside of the camper.
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Re: my truck camper

Postby Philip » Thu Dec 01, 2016 7:00 pm

The last couple of days I have been doing other work around the house. Last night I got the base unit flipped over. Today I installed a cleat to mount the wall against. I then installed the wall when help showed up.


Image

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Re: my truck camper

Postby Philip » Thu Dec 08, 2016 7:48 pm

I figured I better get back in here and throw out a update.

Started building the raised platform for the bed. I them painted the bottom side and the area it will cover on the frame work. Sorry I didn't get any pic's before the paint work.

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Today I flipped the frame over and installed it. BTW Those props you see under the ends of the platform will be removed after the lower outer wall is installed. The frame will attach to it.

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After I got that installed I moved onto installing the insulation into the frame.

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Tomorrow I'll get the foam sanded flat and throw the top decking on.


If you look close in that last pic you can see the outside wall sections for the rear of the camper. I spent a while on those trying to figure out the angle for the outside center sections. The rear end walls do not have the same angle as the front wall. With the clipped corners the camper needed to match the flatbed. Those 11 degree angles threw off the center angle.
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Re: my truck camper

Postby MadMango » Fri Dec 09, 2016 8:25 am

I keep (cowboy hat) getting distracted when I (cowboy hat) look at your latest photos (cowboy hat). Looks like you are moving right along, and have a great eye for details.
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Re: my truck camper

Postby Philip » Fri Dec 09, 2016 10:58 pm

Today the first thing to do was skin off the excess from the foam.

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I then threw a sheet of 3/8"s ply on the deck and nailed it down.

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After that I moved onto the passenger side rear wall and started doing the frame work inside the wall.

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I still need to frame a door opening into it before the inner ply goes on.
Last edited by Philip on Sun May 06, 2018 2:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: my truck camper

Postby Philip » Fri Dec 09, 2016 11:38 pm

Philip wrote:Today the first thing to do was skin off the excess from the foam.

Image

I then threw a sheet of 3/8"s ply on the deck and nailed it down.

Image

After that I moved onto the passenger side rear wall and started doing the frame work inside the wall.

Image

I still need to frame a door opening into it before the inner ply goes on.



Mad I am sure the hat looks a lot worse for wear today. That pic has been on the wall for a couple of decades now. If not longer.
I'll see if I can find an updated version. :lol:
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