405 replies to this topic

[Gak]

Thanks again Mike,

That explains it very well, I did actually take the liberty of copying your cam follower idea & yes indeed it works perfect, from my limited experience,

as I'm just doing test pieces of MDF currently until I can build the actual track. The test piece I did in my previous post was to see what my tightest lane would be like, so all's well,

My track will have sweeping bends & is designed to be a fast track and not to tricky compared to some I've seen & raced on (ill post a pic of the draft design on paper when i get time)

This is my jig below, again sorry for the pics, they are just what I took when i had time ( its nothing as good as yours or Steve's but it works fine)



 

 

Again thanks for all the help & tech advice 

[MSwiss]

Your welcome.

Along with being Steve's, this thread is really long, and I wasn't sure what I had posted, or if you had seen it.

Your jig looks great.

You'll have a blast building your track.

[Steve Ogilvie]

The pins in my jig are just 1/8" slot car axles. Early on in this thread I described how it is made. When I first came up with the idea for a jig that cut off of the edge of a track, I was convinced that I needed some sort of roller system. I already knew that I was going to use slot car axles for cutting the lanes off the first cut slot. 

    Then it struck me that I really did not need something that rolled as you went along the edge as long as it would slide. So I tried 1/8" axles for the edge riders and they worked great on MDF board. As long as you have a sharp bit there is only slightly more effort cutting the first slot as cutting the rest.

    My jig has holes for 4",4 1/8",4 1/4" and 4 3/8" slot spacing. These are all on 4" centres. The pins for the first cut are 5" centres 5" out from the router bit. This spacing works really well and I found the 4" centres for the lane cutter keeps the lane spacing more consistent going around corners. The wider the spacing the bigger the elliptical effect and that causes the noticeable differences in slot spacing going around corners.

[Steve Ogilvie]

I haven't posted much lately. Without the ability to pursue our favourite activity of traveling I have found that I really need a big project to keep busy at something other than sitting around drinking beer. Especially once golf season ended.

 

   We are avid campers and we are on our 3rd trailer now over the last 6 years. I have been thinking of scratch building a camper for a long time now and back in early November that is what I started to do. I am now working on the interior of the cabin, tomorrow I hope to start the framing for the walls and bed frame. So it is taking all my time but I am really enjoying it. So there has been no time to sell parts here on slotblog but I thought I would add a bit to this thread.

 

    Looking at some old posts about track building I have come to realize that most people do not like doing the math to figure out circumferences and radiuses for banked turns. I can post the formulas but as one reply said "you lost me at cosine". So I am going to post a cheat sheet here to save people some time and trouble. These are rounded off but they are plenty close enough.

 

Diameter of corner   inches per degree  radius at 5*  radius at 10*  radius at 15

 

2'                              .2094                     12.0459"

2'6"                          .2618                      15.057

3'                              .3142                      18.069

3'6"                          .36652                     21.08           21.324

4'                             .41888                     24.092         24.37

4'6"                          .47124                    27.1033        27.417

5'                              .5236                     30.115           30.463

5'6"                           .57596                   33.126          33.51

6'                              .62832                   36.1377         36.556

6'6"                          .6807                      39.149          39.6

7'                              .73304                    42.1606        42.65

7'6"                           .7854                     45.172          45.695

8'                               .83776                  48.1836         48.75

8'6"                           .89012                  51.1951         51.787

9'                              .94248                   54.2065         54.833      55.959

9'3"                           .9687                    55.7123         56.3566     57.513

9'6"                           .99484                  57.218           57.8798     59.0674

I am going to stop there for tonight. But take note of how close a 9'6" diameter is to 1" per degree. Whenever I was building a banked track I always figured 1" per degree for the circ of that diameter corner. Almost a magic number. 

[Bill from NH]

Steve, you could always paint some golf balls with fluorescent colors so you could see them in the snow. When I was in Denver, the winter of '95, I actually so some doing that at a small course that was open.   

[Steve Ogilvie]

I have some glow in the dark balls. You hit the ball and it flashes for 5 minutes so you can find it. But temps around here usually just hover around the freezing mark in winter so the courses are wet and slushy, not much fun. I usually play hockey 3 times a week but that was canceled with Covid restrictions.

 

Diameter of corner    inches per degree   radius at 5*       10*         15*           20*           30*

 

9"9"                          1.021                       58.724             59.403      60.62

 

10'                            1.04719                   60.229             60.926      62.176

 

10'6"                         1.09956                  63.24                63.972      65.285

 

11'                             1.1519                    66.252              67.0187   68.394    70.236      

 

12'                             1.25664                  72.275              73.111     74.6114   76.621

 

13'                             1.361356                78.298              79.204     80.83       83          90.066

 

14'                             1.46607                  84.32                85.297     87.047     89.391   97

 

When you are figuring what will be your measured circumference, use your as drawn degrees of corner times the inches per degree and then with the finished circumference number being a decimal, round it off to the nearest fraction that you can actually read on a tape measure. In other words you are only going to be accurate to a 32nd of an inch. Always round down and not up, especially if you are building a flat track.

    Whenever I built a flat track I usually added about 1/32" to the radiuses so that the track will pull together easily, giving a little bit of wiggle room and preventing uphill and downhill curves from going off camber. The banking is not noticeable. It is impossible to hand cut curves accurately to have a flat track fit together perfectly.

 

    Stay safe everyone.

[SpeedyNH]

hi Steve,

this might be a dumb question, but what do the asterisks stand for after the 5, 10, 15, etc.? degrees of bank? 

thanks, 

Speedy 

btw, if you want a degree symbol, you can get it by turning on numlock and typing, <Alt> 0176 on the numeric keypad:  ° 

[Steve Ogilvie]

I used the asterisk for a degree symbol cause I am lazy. Thanks maybe other people were wondering about that.

[Brian Vinci]

Steve’s earlier post of his Track #428 doesn’t show the picture so I am posting a couple pics here. Track length is 48-ft. I replaced the power supply and timing system but that’s it. Works great.



Wiring panel. I converted to Trackmate (didn’t have any issue with the common on the + side of the dead strip).

[Bill from NH]

Brian, welcome to Slotblog! .Thanks for sharing photos of your track with us. It must provide you lots of fun with family & friends. 

[HarV Wallbanger III]

I hope to start on my home track in the spring.... after I build a 15x 26 room in the shop.

[Alchemist]

Belated "Greetings and welcome" Brian!

 

That is one gorgeous track!

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

Ernie

[Steve Ogilvie]

Yes, thanks Brian for posting the picture of your track. I don't know why I never put a date built on the tracks, would have made it easy to establish a time line. But I was always so busy I didn't think of little details like that. 

[iceracer]

Hi Brian:  PM sent....Terry

[Gak]

Happy new year folks

My track is nearly done... touch ups, braiding & electronics to fit

Just wanted to say a huge thank you for all the help & advice, couldn't have done it without you all, esp Steve Ogilvie...

Anyone know how I can send this man a drink?  

[MattD]

Steve is sure a big help to  anybody wanting to build a track and doesn't mind taking time to answer any questions.   His  track building thread really helps.

[Steve Ogilvie]

It is really nice to see people posting their track builds here. I have not added much here for quite a while but I did find some of my old original designs about 2 weeks ago. So I will try to post some of them here. I have been building some new cars to use over at my elder son's place but they got invaded by covid Christmas day so haven't been able to try the cars out yet. Just minor symptoms but some positive tests so no visits for a while. Have a great 2022 and thanks for the kind words Graham and Matt.

[Don Weaver]

... couldn't have done it without you all, esp Steve Ogilvie...

Anyone know how I can send this man a drink?

 
Try a prepaid Visa, Mastercard, etc.
 
Beautiful track. 

[Paul Menkens]

Any idea how many square feet a gallon of Rustoleum 5300 covers?
 
Is there any alternative paint that would be best for traction with no glue?
 
What is the formula for spray glue?
 
Thanks.

[Jay Guard]

I don't know an exact figure but my 88' long four-lane track (plus inner side walls) was done with a bit less than one gallon of Rustoleum 5300.
 
An alternate with more grip might be something like a flat latex paint. But from my limited experience with it it's pretty hard to clean once it gets dirty.
 
There's a ton of spray glue formulas out there, just depends on how "stuck" you want the track. That is, do you want mostly natural tires to have to be used (i.e. light glue) or maybe heavier glue for harder Wonder tire use. Maybe start with a quart of naphtha and a bottle of Koford medium glue. Test that out and see how that works. Then for the next mix add or subtract glue (or use a "light" or "heavy" type) to get the level of grip you want.

[Brian Czeiner]

An alternative to spray glue might be putting a drop at the beginning of the straights where the car is done swinging from the corner. You can better control the amount of sticky and you don't end up with glue all over your braid or track. It ends up only in the tire path. You can experiment with the placement and thickness for optimum performance. It also helps save on the naptha getting down into your braid dissolving the contact cement or 3m tape. The cars will be loose for the first few hours but rubber will build in a short time. Plus you can always add another drop if you choose.

[NSwanberg]

In the "leave it at the track Parma Flexi 5 IROC racing" at TSS when it was in Monroe, I would glue the track before the race in the "glue boxes" rather that spray gluing the entire track. I think it is far superior to spray glue but you better have somebody that knows what they are doing with their glue bottle. The person doing the gluing has to know that they will not know what lane they will be starting on so he tries to be consistent on all the lanes. I thought it worked well and the racers did not complain.

[Paul Menkens]

An alternative to spray glue might be putting a drop at the beginning of the straights where the car is done swinging from the corner. You can better control the amount of sticky and you don't end up with glue all over your braid or track. It ends up only in the tire path. You can experiment with the placement and thickness for optimum performance. It also helps save on the naptha getting down into your braid dissolving the contact cement or 3m tape. The cars will be loose for the first few hours but rubber will build in a short time. Plus you can always add another drop if you choose.

I do this at home and it works well, one thing I hate is so much glue on the track that it bogs down the cars, at one track I raced at every week about 30 years ago a nationally known racer came one time and he put so much glue down on the track that the slower class cars like flexis and brasskars got slowed WAY down when they hit it, the second week after he came I went in early on race night and cleaned it all off.

[Brian Czeiner]

I do this at home and it works well, one thing I hate is so much glue on the track that it bogs down the cars, at one track I raced at every week about 30 years ago a nationally known racer came one time and he put so much glue down on the track that the slower class cars like flexis and brasskars got slowed WAY down when they hit it, the second week after he came I went in early on race night and cleaned it all off.

We did this in our old store. We didn't permit customers gluing of the track to avoid that very problem. Our classes were generally 16D or falcon powered anyway. I expect a few added glue to the tires in the pits but generally they just kept the tires clean. We cleaned the track each week or other week (I forget) to keep consistency. 

[Steve Ogilvie]

Racing on my latest slot car track at Ernie Mossetti's store. - YouTube

 

And Happy New Year to everyone.