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Building Tips and technical articles. => 1/2 A building. => Topic started by: Bruce Shipp on October 27, 2020, 09:53:55 PM
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Last year I found a Testors Cosmic Wind on eBay. This was the first CL plane I flew and was pleased to find a very clean unflown example. It makes me happy seeing it on my desk, but I’ll never fly it.
Most of the classic plastic models found for sale are either like mine, too nice to fly, or in such poor condition they are unflyable. I really want to fly my favorites that I could not afford as a kid...Pitts Special, Cox Mustang and Chipmunk stunter.
What keeps us from 3D scanning existing examples and sharing the files for printing new examples? I don’t have any first hand experience with 3D scanning and printing but from what I have read this seems doable...I have now clue as to the $$$.
Any smart 3D printing gurus out there. Can we bring back the shrill scream of baby bees to basketball courts and parking lots everywhere? Will I finally get my Art Scholls Pitts?
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Can we bring back the shrill scream of baby bees to basketball courts and parking lots everywhere?
No - because we are too old to out run the cops anymore :)
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A fella I know by the name of Troy has completely 3d printed 2 RC airplanes now. They're pretty light and fly well.
I would think this could be possible. The issue would be to have someone input everything into a cad program for the printer.
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A brief search today yielded some free 3D scanning software using a smart phone. It was pretty slick. It matched the high end scanners to within 0.2 mm. My thought would be to disassemble an existing model to individual parts, scan and print each part. Theoretically you could reproduce exact copies of the original models, part for part.
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The Cox Spook would be a wonderful project! It was a fantastic flyer.
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vote #2 for the Spook
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The Spook doesn’t look all that hard to reverse engineer. Scanner not likely required. Anyone got one nib? I can do the CAD and print a few samples. 3D printing is not injection molding. It’s a completely different process so there maybe some slight design changes to suit. I’d actually prefer to make it a 21st century version for electric power.
Paul
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The Cox Spook would be a wonderful project! It was a fantastic flyer.
I've been trying to get a friend at work with a hobby size 3D printer to print me up a Spook kit. He just has no interest. I've even thought about buying a printer and doing it myself. I just have to learn how to convert a .dwg file to something that a 3D printer will use.
Mark
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I believe that it was discussed on this very forum to engineer a balsa wood version of The Spook. If that effort took place, then maybe those drawings could be used as a base for 3D printing one. I would be interested in one. I'll be watching this thread.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
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The Spook doesn’t look all that hard to reverse engineer. Scanner not likely required. Anyone got one nib? I can do the CAD and print a few samples. 3D printing is not injection molding. It’s a completely different process so there maybe some slight design changes to suit. I’d actually prefer to make it a 21st century version for electric power.
Paul
Paul,
There are .pdf and .dwg files for the Spook that have been floating around for a while. Looking at the files that I have, it looks like a drawing was made by Doug Dahlke in 2002, and an AutoCad file by Randy Heydon in 2005. Doing a search here, I see that Mr. Dahlke passed away in November of 2012. Before my time here on SH. A search for Mr. Heydon shows he passed in August of 2019. I believe Mr. Heydon is the source of my files via Ron Cribbs. If you PM me your email address we can get the files to you. But I doubt it would do well as an electric, with that long nose.
Here is a thread on the CEF about building a copy with pictures if that helps: https://www.coxengineforum.com/t3877-spook-can-it-be-done?highlight=spook (https://www.coxengineforum.com/t3877-spook-can-it-be-done?highlight=spook)
Mark
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Mark,
I'm getting close to running a CNC milling machine...from what I understand, the cad files get run through a converter that then outputs stl files, also called tool path files. The stl file gets pushed into the cutter, or even a 3d printer, and the machine follows the tool path to make your part. I know that is the 30k foot explanation, but that is all I have right now.
I've been trying to get a friend at work with a hobby size 3D printer to print me up a Spook kit. He just has no interest. I've even thought about buying a printer and doing it myself. I just have to learn how to convert a .dwg file to something that a 3D printer will use.
Mark
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I wish it was that easy. Truth is, it takes a fair amount of time to convert from 2D .dwg to a usable 3D CAD file. For printing, the 3D file is saved in something like an .stl file format. Then the .stl is opened in a slicer program that divides the model into print layers and generates the machine code for the printer, usually a gerber file or .gcode. So after a few hours of work here's what I printed so far. These were some easy parts. The bell crank centre mount took about 55 minutes to print and the rib 28 minutes. The amount of PLA filament used literally cost just pennies. The final product is very economical at the cost of a fair amount of up front labour.
I'm using OnShape for the CAD, Cura for the slicer and a Creality CR-20 Pro printer. I'll keep chipping away at this project and see if I can get close to something that might be usable. I might need some more help. Does anyone have a copy of the original instructions? That might help fill in some blanks.
Paul
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Way cool! Keep up,the good work. 👍😍