Ever since Katelynn was born, I have been struggling (harder than usual), to get out to the garage and work on the airplane.  The days of coming home and working on the plane all night, without interruption, are over.  So I have been coming to terms with how can I get this plane done and balance that against spending time with my new baby girl.

Today, is really my first day back at trying to work on the plane in a long time.  Therefore, I decided to cut my teeth on some simple fabrication of parts today.

I started with drilling the attach holes for the F-661EF, Flap Bearing Block.  I marked and drill the first hole to dimension as called out in the print.  I then attached the flap bearing block to the F-705D, bulkhead side channel. I didn't drill the second hole while installed.  I just got the second hole started and then put the bearing block back in the vise and drilled the hole with the mill.  I didn't want to drill the bearing block by hand while installed in the bulkhead side channel because I was concerned about getting the hole straight.

After I got the block drilled, I test fit it into the bulkhead side channel.  They fit perfectly.  The holes are nice and tight, the block sits straight.  Good to go.

Just another angle of the bearing block.

The next component I decided to fabricate was the F-711E, Down Elevator Stop / Spacer.  I drew the part up on CAD given the dimensions in the drawing.  I then used the mill to cut out the part from 2024T3 0.125" sheet stock I had laying around. I am not a CAD wizard, but it only took about 10 minutes to draw up in CAD and generated the G-Code to run the mill.

Here, the mill is cutting the part the F-711E out.

The great thing about the CNC mill is that the parts are way more accurate than what you can cut by hand.  The part below is accurate to Van's dimensions to within a couple of thousandths of an inch.

I am finding that the time cut out with the mill does not take that much longer considering that I would have had to cut this out by hand, try to straightened out all the lines with a file, and do significant deburring. The mill cut this out in under 10 minutes.  I took the part to the scotchbrite wheel and within 15 minutes I had a part, cut more accurately than I could do by hand.  I love that little benchtop CNC mill !!!!

Slow day, but I spent majority of the time trying to figure out where I left off on the fuselage.  I have drawn up in CAD several more parts that need fabrication, but there is no need to detail that until I actually get them cutout.