Cat Wheel part 2

So with the design ironed out and after many sessions about how to actually go about it, we set out to produce our cat wheel!
If you do not wish to read it all, here is the final result (sort of, my phone died before we bolted the box together completely).

Almost finished kitty wheel!.

We decided to make two thicker outer rings, one shown in the picture below, that would primarily hold the thin running track plywood in place and shape. The outer diameter of the ring is 120cm, the inner diameter 106cm and a 1cm deep and 0.7cm wide recess was machined 4cm into the circle to hold the running track. This gives the future running track a diameter of roughly 114cm.

One out of two outer rings

We then also made two smaller rings to be placed between the outer rings to support and stabilize the running track. The outer diameter of the inner rings is 120cm and the inner diameter is 114cm.
To make the rings we used a CNC programmable machine that can cut out perfect circles and recess. It is possible to do with other tools, but substantially more time consuming. A woodworking company should be able to produce the CNC code in pretty much no time and run it as it is not very complicated.
The running track contained of three pieces of 30cm wide, 240cm long and 0.03cm thick plywood. The circumference of the running track is pi*diameter = 358cm to the plywood will have to overlap twice. On top of this, to make the track sturdier we made a double layer of track, so it added up to 0.6cm thickness total.
Below is a picture cutting the thin plywood to the left whilst the right picture show the bottom outer ring and one inner ring dry fitted with one section of the running track. We forced down the sections of plywood into the recess, it requires a good portion of brute force, some finesse and plenty of fiddling to get it in place.

 We dry fitted the whole wheel, left picture below, including the two inner wheels so ensure it all fit together nicely. We used straps to hold the wheel in shape when removing the outer rings, middle picture below, to add expanding special glue into the outer ring recesses, right picture below, and then reassembled the wheel (again with plenty of brute force! ;) ).

We strapped the wheel together and let it all dry before using a pneumatic staple gun to further secure the running track to the outer rings, see picture below.

The wheel might look heavy, but remember all the plywood (except the running track) is in Poplar so it is very lightweight!

We now had a wheel, and a pretty one as well in my opinion! At this point in to the build we thought the worst was behind us, but of course we were wrong. :)
To be continued...