Since I’m not going for the parachute option I don’t have the parachute box. The flanges of the center console skins remain unriveted which I don’t like. So I started to experiment a better solution.
The flanges of the center console skins are not symmetrical, see More work to front inside side skins and center console skins
These flanges are normally attached to the parachute box, but since I don’t go for the parachute option I don’t have this box.
I contacted Sling aircraft and they told me that these flanges remain unrivetted.
However I have seen photos of these flanges where they were either bend or cracked when no parachute box was installed, probably due to touching the skins with shoes during the flight.
So I thought about removing the 2 flanges and make the channel skins symmetrical:
In Onshape I designed a cover:
Since a sheet metal brake can’t be used for bending the flanges I had to make a bottom and top mold, for this I used a desktop CNC router:
Next was making the aluminium piece:
Deburring needed was minimum, next was marking the location for the bead roller:
Rolling the 2 beads for extra strength:
Clamping the piece in the bottom and top mold in the vice, using the M4 alignment bolts and bending the flanges with a soft hammer:
Looking good, the part is straight and with 0.5 mm accurate: