What do you do if you don't have the money to buy straight track pieces
to make a real looong straight ?
Right ! You make it yourself...... But how ?
It's simple, you measure the lenght you want as a straight, make sure
you make it the exact as long as
if you where making it with plastic pieces. This way it will fit into
your track with no problem.
Go to a wood shop and buy the wood, preferable the kind with small fibers
like MDF. This can be
routed (sawing in the slots) easely and creates a good quality slot.
If you own a router you can
route your own slots, if not let the wood shop do it. You can also
use a circle saw machine
but that's a little more difficult.
On the piece of wood you bought measure exactly the place where the
slots need to come.
Get these mesurement from your plastic track. Also make the slots deep
enough. I used
12mm thick MDF with 7mm deep slots.
If that's done you need to make the conductive strips next to the slots
for the power to
the cars. I tried two kinds, copper tape (which is hard to get here
in Holland) works
great just stick it next to the slots and solder the end to the existing
track. I looked around
for something different and found radiator tape, this is alluminium
tape which infact works
just as well as the copper. There is one drawback, it solders badly.
I used solder and
conductive paint (get it at a car shop, it's used to repair rear window
heating systems).
This way i created a straight of 4,5 meters, with two pieces of wooden
track. and it goes
FAST, this is because the magnet traction is not used on the straight
(copper and alluminium are
non magnetic).
When you have this the creation of deadstrip area's is very easy, just
cust the conductive tape
with a knive a your set.
The cost to do this was in my case just a fraction of buying new plastic track pieces !!!
Here is a picture of the Junction between the MDF routed wood track
and the plastic track.
The allignment is very important aswell as the connection electrically.
Have fun racing
Alex