As I wrote earlier, there was a Home Depot run on Sunday. We picked up quite a few things but the critical item, at least in go-kart terms, was a 2' by 4' sheet of half inch birch plywood. Our kart needs a back bone and this is it.
The above image is from when we still planned to make it out of 1/8" aluminum, when we decided to make the change to wood we (Carolyn, master of splines) beefed up the cross supports and changed the profile to include the rear upward bend. Switching materials also meant switching machines. Waterjets will cut wood but wood gets soggy and it doesn't give the nicest edge quality. The clear choice was to put my newly found MasterCam skills to use and use the CNC router that lives in the MIT Hobby Shop. We encountered a small issue with lead in / lead out paths and an unnecessary finish cut but Ken helped us sort that out quickly and we got some very nice looking parts after a bit of trimming and light sanding.
