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Adapting CAD skills to 3D Printing

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Adapting CAD skills to 3D Printing

Postby daveculp » Thu Oct 22, 2020 4:00 am

Hi All!

I've been away from the flight sim world for quite a while. Retired now and pursuing other hobbies. Lately I've been using the CAD skills I learned during my FlightGear devel days to 3D print add-ons for RC airplanes. The newest generation of "foamies" have amazing fidelity - enough to make them candidates for 1/9 scale static models!

A couple months ago an old Air Force buddy contacted me about taking a 1/9 scale OV-10A model and adding 3D printed parts to it so that it will resemble the airplanes we flew in Germany in the 1980-1982 era. I said yes, that could be done, so he said "Great! I'll send you one!". So a 1/9 scale OV-10A showed up at my door a week later. I've been busy printing up new bits for it. Here's a bomb rack with practice bombs.

Image

Here's a new scale nose gear that'll pop in to the existing well (keeping the airplane flyable after it's removed)

Image

I haven't even gotten to the cockpit yet. Presently working on the main gear.

Dave Culp

For the 230 gallon centerline tank I 3D printed molds on an FDM printer, then poured the tank halves with liquid foam, then added some bits printed on a DLP printer.

Image
Image
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Re: Adapting CAD skills to 3D Printing

Postby Johan G » Thu Oct 22, 2020 6:24 am

Welcome back. :D

For smaller more complicated details you could test a technique someone I know have experimented with. In essence he print a mold in a water soluble support filament, filling it with epoxy and dissolving the filament:

anton4video, Pipe cleaning nozzle in epoxy from 3D printer (2 min, published April 22, 2020)
Low-level flying — It's all fun and games till someone looses an engine. (Paraphrased from a YouTube video)
Improving the Dassault Mirage F1 (Wiki, Forum, GitLab. Work in slow progress)
Some YouTube videos
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Re: Adapting CAD skills to 3D Printing

Postby stuart » Mon Oct 26, 2020 11:58 pm

Hi Dave,

Great to hear from you. So will this be a flying 1/9 scale model, or purely static?

I still enjoy flying many of your models, particularly the AD-6 and F-4. Your JSMSim FDMs just fly "right" in some way I can't really explain. James has been in touch with Alphasim (who I think released some of their early models to you?) who have offered a model or two as GPL. Do you still have an archive of your work somewhere we might update with new models?

Best regards,

-Stuart
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