Visited Lancair yesterday to go over the progress. Things are moving forward well. All my experience with CNC machining is really helping now – I can prep the CAD so that programs can be generated directly from it without any additional work on their end. For my part this requires figuring out how to stack the foam blocks for best use of material, changing features so that drafts are sufficient for the available tools and so on.

The door molds are being machined – here’s a quick video clip. The foam is first machined undersized, then glass and bondo are applied to make a rigid surface, then the part is machined again. While the first mold gets glassed, the next one will be going through the first machining stage.

The mold that will make both side panels is the one we’ll be doing next. It is considerably larger and more complicated but the principle is the same – single 3-piece mold to make both parts at the same time.

As before, the green surfaces are what the actual parts are going to be.

Lancair is first and foremost an airplane manufacturer (they just happen to be able to apply their composites expertise to other projects, like cars). So it’s fun to see several planes in various stages of construction. One of these years I’ll get one. Not this year though.

With the next mold ready to hand off I now have a small window to dedicate to catching up on other items, like testing. This weekend will be the first drive for the turbo AWD D4 that we’ve been building. That’s what I’d like to run at Pikes Peak next year and go for the new overall record. Jonathan will also be testing several tire configurations on the D2, as well as different pads and better fluid on the D2 brakes. More soon.