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Progress update for St Paddy's Day, 2024. I have finished the cylinder cast and the machined parts for it. I have also finished the head castings. As always, I am posting these to Grabcad, however because I am only going to upload the major assemblies of the BOM, the only thing I am posting right now are the castings. The completed machined assembly should be done in a few weeks.

I have completed the next major subassembly of the Merlin and posted it to grabcad if anyone is interested. https://grabcad.com/library/packard-v1650-7-merlin-lower-crankcase-assembly-1

Just a quick head's up to let you know I've finished the lower crankcase casting, a.k.a the oil pan casting. It's up on grabcad if you want to download it. The finished assembly with the machined part will be out soon.

It would take me about a year of dedicated work probably. That's 40 hours a week, 52 weeks. So compare that against your salary, that would be my best way to estimate how much it'd cost to put it together.

Just a brief update: You might know about this thread where I asked about interest in some aftermarket Merlin engine kits for larger scale models. I wanted to find a way to garner some financial support for the project so I decided on doing those 3D printed kits and got some good feedback. I also started a patreon page where you can actually support the project and get something in return. Right now it's just an engine kit in the scale of your choice once it is complete, it won't be an entire engine bay, though those will come later. You can always wait and use your credits then, too. Anyway, on to the update. Thanks to Tom Kay up in Canada I was able to get a scan of his lower crankcase which helped me model the shape in the forward area of the oil pan, which wasn't as well defined in the blueprints as I would have liked. I imported his scan and here I am showing it in place in the engine assembly: This is not a CAD model, it is an imported STL file created from the 3D point cloud data. In other words it's just for looks. I know how to define almost all of the geometry of the oil pan, except for the slope at the front. It isn't really well defined, and TBH a little conflicting in the blueprint. Thanks to the scan though I was able to power through and came up with a pretty good representation: I still need to create all the bosses and cutouts for the forward bolt holes but I think this was the hardest part of the the oil pan and the rest is just going to be filling out the rest of the details. The area at the back is complicated but I don't think it's going to be difficult. EDIT: I thought I'd add a couple quick links to the galleries of the 3D printed parts I made on my Photon Mono X. I'm a bit giddy with how well these came out. 1/24th scale crankcase 1/8th scale crankcase

I have an old thread in the WIP forum that is the main thread where I have been updating the progress on the engine, I probably won't do to much in the way of patreon only updates so you can either check that thread for new info or follow the link below to see my blog page. Thank you guys for the input and I look forward to seeing you in the other thread. Also thank you to my new patron, you know who you are.

Yeah, that's the general idea. I'd have 1/24th and 1/32nd versions for using in kits, but I also want to do a standalone kit in the larger scale by itself and put it in a stand like maybe the P-51's engine mount.

I have found a few things I need to do better for the next print but I think I'd want to try and model a lot more parts to go with it.

Allright guys, you convinced me, I'm moving forward with the projects. I've started a patreon page here if you are interested. I have included the idea of "store credit" into it. For every dollar you pledge now, you can get a dollar in "store credit" up to a certain amount depending on tier. Now I probably won't enforce that limit because I doubt to many people will support the project. But I am putting the limit in just in case I have so many people support me that I end up going broke once kits are actually released trying to match everyone dollar for dollar. It also gives you the choice to pledge just enough to get a kit if that's what you are wanting and once you have reached the limit, just stop supporting. The credit won't go away. I'll do my best to keep track of it all, but you might want to keep the info in your records as well, just to keep me honest. (Actually it's more about me being so birdbrained sometimes, but we can just call it keeping me honest.) I haven't decided on kit prices but I have a feeling that for patreon patron it'll be $50 for a 32nd scale engine or a 24th a scale one, their choice. The large standalone kit is going to be more, but I don't know how much yet. While I say all this, it can all change to depending on what people want or if people feel I am being unfair. Just please let me know your feedback.

I just noticed that the holes for the lifting shackle just above the center of the upper gear housing casting printed perfectly. So I checked and all the holes for the housing bolts themselves printed clearly, too. Though it's a bit hard to show them all at once. Damn, this could be a badass kit.

Ray, I could have sworn I replied to this but I guess it got lost in the shuffle. I've seen the kit, there are some areas I think that could be improved on. The engine mount leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion. Also, you will notice that the cowl frame covers the last exhaust port of the Merlin. Es no bueno.

Thanks for the input so far, I am taking it all into consideration. I printed the 8th scale crankcase today, it took 4.5 hours and I learned a few lessons from it to change for next time. The first was not to let the raft interfere with the body at the base, it overwrote all the holes in the base and is making the cleanup in that area a pain. I think I'll raise it off the build plate by 4mm next time and just connect to the raft via supports. I'll also move a few supports a tiny bit further away from body so they stick less. Here's a gallery of the larger piece. I kinda like the idea of making a standalone kit, I think I could get away with 1/6th scale if I really wanted to. I will probably move ahead with a patreon just to get it started and see how far that can take me. I'm still trying to figure how I'd do rewards on that, in that the rewards would be kits. Anyway, thanks for the support so far and please, let me know what you think. I really do want to know.

First test shot just came off the printer: Here is a gallery with more images, hopefully the detail level comes across. I'm a little giddy at how well they turned out. Tomorrow I plan to print an 8th scale one just for the halibut. I'll update you then.

I was fooling around on my 3D printer, an Anycubic Photon Mono X, and found I could print up to 10 crankcases at a time. That got me to thinking what the hell I would do with 10 1/24th scale merlin crankcases and the idea of letting anyone who wants one have one was pretty much all I could come up with. I'd love to send one to anyone who asks, but 3D printing resin is expensive and I don't have the money to throw around to do that right now. But I had been kicking around this idea of starting a patreon page for a few months and when I combined it with the 3D printer I thought I might have come up with something that would actually get some support. Well, as it is it's not a complete idea yet, so I'm not going to do a patreon yet, I want to have a more concrete plan before I do that. But the general idea would be that I could 3D print parts of the Merlin as I complete them and then send them to people who had subscribed at certain tiers for a certain length of time. Once it was all done you could assemble a complete 24th scale Merlin to do with as you please. It probably wouldn't include internals just because those would be too small, but it would be the most accurate 24th scale model of a Merlin available. Well, that's the idea, I don't know if it's feasible or not, I'm just looking for feedback. I do want to branch out into other areas, too. One would be to do some stuff for the 24th P-47 from Kinetic like gun bays and landing gear, but I don't have R-2800 blueprints yet. Still looking for those. I also would love to do a kitted out engine bay for the Trumpy 1/35th Mi-24 Hind kit.

If you look in my signature you can see a a grabcad link. I post all my CAD files to there as I complete them. I've even included STL files in the case of the upper crankcase.

Unfortunately I don't have blueprints for any other engines or the P40 I might consider it.

What is, instead of sanding the edges to incredible thinness, you could just do a cutout and drop the product in, fill any gap be on your way? In other words the insert would already have the thin edges built in and the cutout in the kit part would be to the outside of the insert?

Don't forget that I want to do larger scales as well, like 24th and possibly even 18th for the HpH kit.

Hi guys, Some of you might remember me as the guy doing a CAD model of the Packard Merlin engine which I posted about a while ago. I just got myself a very pretty SLA 3D printer and have been playing around with printing some of the CAD models I have been working on. I'm kind of curious if there is any interest in me creating a line of large scale AM kits for use in larger scale static models, e.g. 16th, 18th, 24th, and 32nd scales. I might even see if I can create the entire P-51 engine bay, I've got the blueprints for it. But I'm not sure if anyone would want to buy something like that. Well, that's not true I am sure some people would be interested, I just don't know how many and how much it would be worth to them. I haven't found anyone else doing these yet so I am hoping there would be enough interest to make it worth my time, what do you guys think? If there is enough interest I hope to branch out to other AM kits for stuff I've worked on such as landing gear bays and gun bays, etc.

This, best damned war movie sound track ever.

Aaaaaaand Spaghetti. Trying again with different settings.

I've been working on the oil pan on and off for a couple weeks now but I don't have enough to post yet, but I thought I'd take advantage of my down time to upgrade my 3D printer. And of course, what is the first thing I have to print? Take a guess: Image removed It's currently an hour and a half into an estimates 44 hour print. Wish me luck. Say a prayer to the kami of 3D printers.

Those are all built, tho...

Aircorps Library has Spitfire blueprints, but I'm not familiar with specific mk's they might have.

IDK, did you see that 1/18th scale Lope's Hope 3rd? That was a work of art to me. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say, and art is similarly something that has to be interpreted by the beholder.