DIY 270 Awning for Wedge Camper

Got my pieces from sendcutsend today, all slot and tab.

It'll make welding SUPER fast.

 

Welded up the brackets, ground the backsides flat, and powder coated them today.

 

Those look nice!

 

Damn those look good! You powder coat yourself?

 

Yep

Harbor freight powder coating system and a used toaster oven from Goodwill.

 

Cool idea! Following

 

Damn. Another project for be to work on

 

Made some progress on the build today.

All aluminum arms, TIG is a lot slower process than MIG.

I need to weld in the braces on two more arms and then start the sewing process.

 

Looking sweet!

 

Made the basic shape by sewing two widths of the material together.

This is definintely going to be a drape, trim, and hem method.

My CAD measurements ended up a little off from the real world ones for some reason.

So far, I like how big it is when it's open.

 

Got mine all laid across the arms and marked out.

I was considering doing a hang down lip that went all the way around, but decided it's beyond my skills and likely not worth the extra ~30' of stitches.

 

@davzx how did you attach the fabric up front to the front bracket?
Sandwich it in there, or did you use a strap or something?

 

Ended up putting a grommet in the corner of the tarp and then using an S-biner to attach to an eye bolt on the extrusion. Eye bolt is hidden by the bag. Did the same on the rear corner as well.

Photos below use a bungee, but I got rid of those - it’s just the S-biner from the tarp to the eye bolt now, and it stays super taut.

I’ll unzip the bag, immediately attach that front corner, then swing open the rest of it.

 

I’m glad this is working out for someone else, ha. I figured the fabric would be a wild card, depending on the specific material used and however pliable it is. I did the same drape method with my fabric - used spring clamps to hold in place on the ends of the arms and pull tension on it and marked where to cut. Ended up not being a perfect 10x12 but close.

 

More action from today.

I just need to trim one side a little more, hem it, and make the bag.

Ended up making two seams that run front to back. Since the fabric is only 59-60" wide of usable material it had to be widened.

 

Looks great. Did you or are you going to add in the little feet that you use to push up the roof for drainage?

 

Yep! It's pretty taut as it is right now, but I'm adding the feet near the hinge to slope it away from the camper.

 

Finished the actual awning material today.

Bag is next.

 

Next up is the bag.

I had a CVT awning with a boxed shape bag that worked really nice. I'd like to replicate it.



After a bit of Google action, I came across a pattern for DIY zippered makeup bags. So, essentially I'll be making a big, long, DIY zippered makeup bag.

Here's the pattern shape:



And here's a quick mockup of it with gaps to show where your material will meet together:



What you end up doing, based on the tutorials I read, is to line up your pattern shape on the material, and add an extra 0.5"-1" to allow for you to sew the flaps together. The material and zipper gets sewn inside out, so that when you're done, you invert the bag right side out.

Time to start drawing the pattern on the vinyl I got from @davzx
More to come.

 

Looks great! Nice job and will be following in your footsteps with the aluminum version.

Question about the Send-Cut-Send files: When I am ready to make this in a few months or so, can I copy off your homework? If not I could use the practice making some vector files.