It first started as just 'hey, look someone build it them-self' until we were watching videos of teardrops before sleeping.
On Christmas 2021 I realized that we invested so much time into these videos and why not build it, so I 3d printed my girlfriend a key chain representation of a teardrop as a gift, hinting that we're going to build one.
We don't really have much experience in building anything larger than tomato house and things around the house. So it's going to be interesting
I Opened up Fusion 360 and we started discussing and sketching. In the meantime we also registered on Notion.so to have some kind of project planning. We created there TODO's, album of media, where we're storing home-built teardrops, blogs, links etc and a shopping list.
Fast-forward 2-3 months of research and sketching we came up with this design.
In the meantime I was also ordering a trailer 'plato' which we unfortunately wait for to this day, have a bit of a communication problem with the manufacturer so whenever they make one, they sell it before I have a chance to pick-it-up
Since I have got the exact dimensions of the trailer on hand, I adjusted the designs a bit and started working on technical drawings for 'metal bending' company that my friend works at.
We decided from the very beginning that we make the frame out of steel.
The time for the technical drawings has come, so I sat again at fusion and prepared what I thought was a good technical drawing for the frame. A few minutes after I sent it to my friend I was told the opposite
So I've made a few iterations there as well.I knew beforehand that bending and welding the frame would take them a few months as they were overloaded by much larger clients. It gave us a bit of time to start shopping. We found an e-shop in Netherlands, that is selling small rv windows, aluminium rv door frames for teardrops etc. This made things a lot easier as I was worried about home-building these a lot.
During a summer we also decided on a car fridge so I updated a few parameters in our CAD to accommodate it into our kitchen, we tested it a few times during our car camping throughout the Europe and we're extremely happy with it so far.
Here is a small sneak peak into our notion, we try to keep things organised only there, so whenever we find a new link, or something to discuss (what to buy for example), we write it in Notion and discuss it there.
It's a full year since we decided to go for it. Things were a bit slow as we were waiting for the frame and the trailer itself to be manufactured as these we couldn't really affect.
But a month ago I got a call from my friend that the frame is ready and I can come pick it up. We now live in different country, so it was an 800km trip that we planned over the New Year's eve.
We celebrated a bit back in my home country, I borrowed a trailer from my friend and there it was in all it's glory waiting for us. We were super stoked to see the frame it for the first time and not just a 3d representation of it.
Did not weight it, but we were able to unload it from the trailer in 2 weak men, CAD was saying that the frame should have roughly 80kg which I think is pretty accurate.
My friend did an amazing job and everything was according to the drawings. On our 8 hour way home, it was difficult to talk about anything else.
And that's where we're now. This month we have some traveling and quest visits already planned but as soon as we've a build progress I will try to keep this post updated. The next step is to weld one more support for a floor, cut flooring / wooden panel to size and start with kitchen area interior walls.