Brief Description: Prototyping A Shim To Align Rivnuts With Bolts
The curvatures of the air intake opening flanges where the bolts must go to secure the upper and lower cowling pieces together at the air intake openings do not match. As is, this will cause the nutplatet to not be perpendicular to the bolt when the bolt is inserted through the upper cowling flange hole and the bolt head is seated flush against the flange.
I 3D printed a carbon fiber reinforced shim prototype that when mounted on the back of the lower cowling flange, will allow the nutplate to be mounted perpendicular to the bolt that will secure the flanges. These flanges appear to be too rigid for the bolts to be forcefully tighted down enough to pull the flanges together without placing too much stress on the on the fiberglass flanges.
While the shim addresses the angle at which the nutplate is mounted relative to the bolt path, it does not address the gap between the two flanges due to the different flange curvatures. I suspect I will need to add a fiberglass build-up to the inside of the upper cowling flange that eliminates the gap and allows firm contact between the flanges when the bolt is tightened.
Also note that the prototyped shim may need to be reproduced from another material.
Due to mismatched curvatures, the nutplate is not perpendicular to the bolt.
3D printed CF reinforced shim to align the nutplates to be perpendicular to the inserted bolt.
3D printed CF reinforced shim to align the nutplates to be perpendicular to the inserted bolt.
