Batch 1 Done

Just received the first batch of supports back from the powder-coater. They look great and are definitely tougher than the set I had tried painting. 

These are more durable and are ready to ship. All are spoken for and I'm not certain when the next batch will be made.

Proto 1...

I took the measurements of the mounting points and the angles of the trellis sub frame and drew up a prototype in CAD. I took some steel tubing and bent it to the correct angle, crimped the ends drilled some holes and there you have it! I left a little extra on the ends just in case I had to adjust the holes a bit. I will trim the ends later and also paint the tube black.

The supports were surprisingly rigid for being mounted with only two bolts. More to come soon!...

The Idea...

The first thing I usually do to design something is to go directly into SolidWorks and start modeling but since I wanted this to have some ID influence I started with some pictures and stumbled my way through an open source photo editing program (GIMP) to get an idea about how the support would look.

Once I had the basic design I took some measurements of mounting points and drew up the first prototype.