I need some advice and help with design tolerances in a mixed material assembly.
I’m planning to make some wire wheels for a car in 1/16 scale. Plastic rims and hubs. Copper wire wrapped between them for the spokes. Desired result shown in first photo.
I’m modelling with Freecad. The spokes are 0.3mm and I decided to use 0.35mm grooves to insert/guide the wires. The rims are 33mm in diameter with 100 spoke grooves spaced at around 1mm spacing around the circumference (the wires are wrapped around two circumferential grooves in the hub). See photo 2 (those tabs will be removed after assembly and there will be a ring attached to the front face to conceal the grooves).
The rims are small and likely to be delicate so I’ve designed an assembly jig to hold everything together while the wires are wrapped and a release jig to force the completed assembly from the assembly jig when it’s fully wrapped. In total I have 8 different parts that fit together and I designed with a 0.1mm clearance. Photo 3 shows an earlier version of the rim and hub located on the primary jig part.
Initially, I planned to use Fine Detail Plastic but I started to worry that the re-usable jig parts would be too fragile to last the assembly of 6 wheels. I had a look at Accura Xtreme 200 as an alternative before I discovered how expensive that is. Next, I looked at Versatile Plastic but discovered that it can’t be painted without soaking up multiple coats. Now I’m thinking to use Versatile Plastic for all the jig parts and FDP only for the rim and hub where I need greatest accuracy and “paintability”.
So.. a couple of questions…
1/ Does my plan make sense or do I need to change my material choices?
2/ If I go with FDP and Versatile Plastic is a 0.1mm clearance adequate?
Any other thoughts?? Hope you can help
TIA
John
John