HK B-17...C 5/4 sweating the metal

[brahman104]

19 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Awesome stuff, Craig!

 

Kev

 

Thanks Kev! Yes it is very exciting the potential of what can be done with this little gem. As I said, it's not without its issues, but it's definitely the way to go for small detailed stuff!

 

15 hours ago, Trak-Tor said:

Now that looks very, very promising...

 

Juraj

 

Oh yes Juraj, you should consider getting one post haste

 

8 hours ago, chilly said:

Nice Craig!

 

For Resin, I have had great luck with Phrozen ABS-like Gray.  I have noticed that the build plate leveling is Key, and then adding supports so there are non floating islands.

 

here is a Fan shroud test I did to see how small I can get holes.  This was Modeled in Maya, exported as an .STL

 

 

 

Wow Kev, that's an amazing print! Thanks for the heads up about the resin.... I've only used the proprietry stuff at the moment, but your results speak for themselves!

 

4 hours ago, AlexM said:

Oh my gosh, this is totally stunning! As chance would have it, I saw this video about the Photon yesterday:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YrUQOYLoK0

 

And now I see your impressive results with this machine. I could not hold myself back, and 10 minutes ago, I ordered this printer for just 400 €

 

 

Sometimes, I also have problems with some 3d-files, that look nice in the CAD software, but are not properly working in the slicing software. Sometimes, it helps when I load the files up to this online repair service:

 

https://service.netfabb.com/login.php

 

Cheers

Alex

 

Hahaha! Great move Alex! And I dare say with your 3D skills, you will be able to take this much further than I have  Thanks for the link about netfab, I did have a bit of a poke around at it, but as it's not available for Mac as far as I can see I didn't pursue it.... still I might have another look!

 

Cheers,

 

Craig

[airscale]

wow that looks good Craig

 

I looked at thos CAD images & thought there is NO WAY all that complex detail & undercuts will come out in print, but there you go, they look awesome

 

It is such a versatile tool I think I really need to consider a full Rhino license and a printer of some sort. I have loads of parts for my P51 that I need to do so having seen this I think I need to bite the bullet and get some kit..

 

loving this whole build - it's wonderful to specate

 

TTFN
Peter

[TKB]

Craig,

 

All that comes to mind when I saw your prints was "Holy Crap!" Didn't believe the driftmeter eye cups and manual fuel transfer pump handle arm!

chilly ---- same goes for your fan shroud! Was that pic "as printed" or "post cleaned-up?"

FYI: Speaking of the fuel pump, when you get to hoses, check out electrical wire "shrinkable tube insulation". Really has the look of reinforced rubber hose. I've seen it in various diameters, lengths and colors. IIRC, that pump called for red hose to be used --- another small flash of color in the bomb bay.

 

This 3-D printing must be fun to experiment and toy around with. When I had a Mattell Vac-u-Form (eons ago when I was a kid), I couldn't stop forming parts and being amazed by being able to  make copies! I admit, I have no real understanding of all the different technical stuff you guys discuss (computer programs, Rhino, resins etc), but I am amazed by it all! As an "armchair modeler" I really enjoy seeing the results and am glad to be along for the ride!

 

The manuals/drawings ---- aren't to many days I don't bring up a couple and pour over them while I have my morning coffee! I love them --- even the ones I haven't quite figure out what the are or where they went! Many thanks. With the summer and all, I haven't been doing too much research since the "fuel tank access panel external stiffiners" stuff. Hope you were able to decipher all the labels and lines. I always find it amazing what you can find in a photo, when you are suddenly looking for something specific in it. Would't have thought those B-17C wreck photos would shed any light on thos "external stiffiners", but in that heap of wreckage ---- there they were! Just let me know if need anything to get me rolling again, but you don't miss much ---- you got the driftmeter type correct. Don't forget the telescope portion coming through a port in the skin; always seem to be visible at varying lengths.

[brahman104]

9 hours ago, airscale said:

wow that looks good Craig

 

I looked at thos CAD images & thought there is NO WAY all that complex detail & undercuts will come out in print, but there you go, they look awesome

 

It is such a versatile tool I think I really need to consider a full Rhino license and a printer of some sort. I have loads of parts for my P51 that I need to do so having seen this I think I need to bite the bullet and get some kit..

 

loving this whole build - it's wonderful to specate

 

TTFN
Peter

 

Very true Peter! But after seeing a couple of youtube reviews and initial experiments with a 50% scaling of your wheel assembly that you sent me, I was confident the machine could give it a red hot go.

 

Honestly Peter, for the skills you have amassed with your trial experiences, I almost think you owe it to yourself to invest, particularly since they keep on upgrading it for you for free. I think it's an indespensable tool, but I know most people don't exactly have the means to just buy things like that. I would say with your skills though, it wouldn't be long before you'd be dispensing with the original kit altogether!

 

57 minutes ago, TKB said:

Craig,

 

All that comes to mind when I saw your prints was "Holy Crap!" Didn't believe the driftmeter eye cups and manual fuel transfer pump handle arm!

chilly ---- same goes for your fan shroud! Was that pic "as printed" or "post cleaned-up?"

FYI: Speaking of the fuel pump, when you get to hoses, check out electrical wire "shrinkable tube insulation". Really has the look of reinforced rubber hose. I've seen it in various diameters, lengths and colors. IIRC, that pump called for red hose to be used --- another small flash of color in the bomb bay.

 

This 3-D printing must be fun to experiment and toy around with. When I had a Mattell Vac-u-Form (eons ago when I was a kid), I couldn't stop forming parts and being amazed by being able to  make copies! I admit, I have no real understanding of all the different technical stuff you guys discuss (computer programs, Rhino, resins etc), but I am amazed by it all! As an "armchair modeler" I really enjoy seeing the results and am glad to be along for the ride!

 

The manuals/drawings ---- aren't to many days I don't bring up a couple and pour over them while I have my morning coffee! I love them --- even the ones I haven't quite figure out what the are or where they went! Many thanks. With the summer and all, I haven't been doing too much research since the "fuel tank access panel external stiffiners" stuff. Hope you were able to decipher all the labels and lines. I always find it amazing what you can find in a photo, when you are suddenly looking for something specific in it. Would't have thought those B-17C wreck photos would shed any light on thos "external stiffiners", but in that heap of wreckage ---- there they were! Just let me know if need anything to get me rolling again, but you don't miss much ---- you got the driftmeter type correct. Don't forget the telescope portion coming through a port in the skin; always seem to be visible at varying lengths.

 

Thanks Terry! I had thought about using the heat shrink tube as it does look good, and providing I shrink it away from the resin, it should be okay. I don't remember seeing any note about the red hose, but you usually notice the small stuff more than me

 

Yep, 3D printing certainly is exciting. One thing I'd like to try is replicating the de-ice tubing that runs under the cockpit floor. There's a picture of it in all those drawings I have and with the "pipe" making function of Rhino, it'll be very interesting to see where it goes! 

 

So anyway, remember how I said I had some issues with trying to print a few of the drawings? Well our resident Rhino 3D God, Wunwinglow (Tim), worked his magic and fixed up my errors. This is how they turned out.....

 

Today I did the centre pedestal and hydraulic tank, a couple of copies again just for good measure.....

 

My new pedestal next to the top of the HK part. The HK part isn't bad, but the early model forts had some variations on the pedestal itself, namely the turbo control behind the mixture levers....

 

And straight out of the printer again..... you can see it will require a bit of clean up, although this may have been exascerbated by me hurrying to clean the excess resin off as I had to go out.... I'm printing another round now to see if it comes out any better....

 

Oh oh..... what's going on here? Looks like there may be a bit of a disconnect between my cockpit dimensions and the boeing drawings, which is not surprising, but perhaps I can rescale the item on 2 axes and have another go. (Interestingly, the width is the same as the original kit part). Oooooppsy!! 

 

And lastly the hyd tank..... I have no reference for scale of this one except some highly blurred images from inside the Swoose, so clearly I've got this right.... 

 

Anyway, that's what this is all about, lots of trial and error. Even as Peter said he's enjoying being a spectator, so am I in many respects as I wait for my little printer to do its thing!

 

Craig

 

 

 

 

 

[wunwinglow]

How the heck did I miss this thread????!!!

 

Glad the tweaks worked, Craig!   Looking amazing project, I have a bit of back reading to do!

 

TTFN,

 

Tim

[Gazzas]

Amazing!!

 

Gaz

[Geddyme]

Very impressive Craig! If I’m remembering rightly, I believe you once told me you CAD skills could use some improvements, I’d say they have. Well done and looking forward to more! I actually started looking at this printer since you posted these.

 

Perhaps with all your free time you can also do a new thread on using the Photon?  

 

Will be following along, can’t wait to see more!

R/S -David

[MikeMaben]

Just a tidbit of information , I don't know about then , but more

recently Boeing calls your pedestal an aisle stand.

 

There , I've made my contribution 

 

BTW , I think you might possibly be insane 

 

 

 

[chilly]

19 hours ago, TKB said:

 

chilly ---- same goes for your fan shroud! Was that pic "as printed" or "post cleaned-up?"

Since this was a resin print I did need to wash it in 91% IPA, then do a follow up cure in a UV chamber for a few minutes.  But there was no sanding or other manipulation.

19 hours ago, TKB said:

 

 

[LSP_Ray]

Nice work, Craig! Haven't checked your thread for awhile and you have been going great guns!

[brahman104]

15 hours ago, Geddyme said:

Very impressive Craig! If I’m remembering rightly, I believe you once told me you CAD skills could use some improvements, I’d say they have. Well done and looking forward to more! I actually started looking at this printer since you posted these.

 

Perhaps with all your free time you can also do a new thread on using the Photon?  

 

Will be following along, can’t wait to see more!

R/S -David

 

Hahaha, thanks David! But did you read the bit where I had to email them half way around the world for Tim to fix up my mistakes?  Yeah mate, I am massively impressed by the photon, but it still isn't a miracle worker. Even if I print for copies of exactly the same part, at the same time, they all come out a little different. There's still about a 20% chance that it won't print anything at all (really disappointing when you come back 2 hours later really excited!) and they are quite messy to clean up. Ummm, I could, but there's some pretty good youtube videos out there already, and more than likely I'm doing it the hard way, because that's just what I do!

 

5 hours ago, MikeMaben said:

Just a tidbit of information , I don't know about then , but more

recently Boeing calls your pedestal an aisle stand.

 

There , I've made my contribution 

 

BTW , I think you might possibly be insane 

 

 

 

 

Thanks Mike! The title of this post will be named accordingly!

 

4 hours ago, chilly said:

Since this was a resin print I did need to wash it in 91% IPA, then do a follow up cure in a UV chamber for a few minutes.  But there was no sanding or other manipulation.

 

 

Agreed. I actually wash the piece in 3 different jars of methylated spirit first, then a squirt off with IPA , then into the UV lightbox for curing. I'm getting better at it but the post processing is still a bit messy!

 

2 hours ago, LSP_Ray said:

Nice work, Craig! Haven't checked your thread for awhile and you have been going great guns!

 

Thanks for looking in Ray! it's always slow progress but it IS progress nonetheless

 

Okay! So I've used the "scale" command in Rhino for the first time!

 

As you know from the last post, the "aisle stand" (thanks Mike!) looked like a giant over-sized novelty loch-ness monster when I test fitted it into the cockpit. Working back with the dimensions I actually had, the stand could be no more than 17mm high overall. In the side view in Rhino, I resized by scale 2-D to the appropriate dimensions. It then looked excessively wide (even though it is the same width as the HK part) . Comparing to period photos, I decided to reduce it to 9mm wide..... after the initial print of four here's my working example next to its original big brother.....

 

 

Bit of a difference right? 

 

Well have a look when it sits in position.....

 

 

As opposed to.....

 

 

Much better I do believe!

 

I still have to clean it up and add the rear console to it, which may look oversize now, but we shall see. In any case, I think I've got a winner!

 

Oh and for those of you wondering, this is how the others turned out just so you can see.....

 

 

And THAT's why I do a few of them!
 

Just need to get back to the actual bench now and do some REAL modelling!!!!

 

Cheers,

 

Craig

 

 

[LSP_Ray]

That looks much better!

I have never worked with the 3D CAD program you are using, but I have done (2D) CAD to make decals, I always drew everything full size, then printed them out at whatever scale I wanted them. That way I never got confused in what scale my decals were printing out at, and it made it easier to draw from references as I was using the original full size dimensions. 

Not always possible when trying to get stuff to fit in a model that might not be perfectly in scale, but was always a good start.

[wunwinglow]

Craig, just a tip for building, try tipping your stl files up at a crazy angle. I have found with the FormLabs, and to be fair all the sla printers I have used in the past, you get surprisingly much better build quality if you avoid placing things vertically and/or flat, or nearly so.  Counter-intuitive I know, but try it! Tip that console up so it is literally standing on one corner, so no edges are parallel with the build bed. It works because every layer is then only slightly bigger or smaller than the one underneath, rather than some no different and some drastically different, and the effect is a much more even finish.  I avoid having parallel surfaces to the platform like the Plague!!!

 

Crack on though, excellent project!

[airscale]

Hi Craig,

 

If it helps, I would join aircorps library - they have every drawing of every component for many aircraft including the B17

 

What I do is find the drawing, copy it into coreldraw

then find a measurement given on the drawing- say it''s 4 inches ( even if i find a part within a part drawing to get that from)

convert this to mm @ 101. 6mm

divide by 32 = 3.175mm

then draw a box on your drawing in corel that goes between the two measured points

look at the dimensions, say it's 14.933mm

tell corel you want that box to be 3.175mm

corel than says you have scaled it by 21.2%

then finally scale the entire drawing by 21.2% and you end up with a scale version of your part

 

I do this all the time so I can print out something as reference, or find a dimension I need - I did it with your pedestal below - drawing number 65-5690..

 

 

If you followed that it's quite a useful process - there are no dimensions on this drawing so I used a control wheel to scale from - hope its accurate

 

All the best

Peter

[brahman104]

1 hour ago, wunwinglow said:

Craig, just a tip for building, try tipping your stl files up at a crazy angle. I have found with the FormLabs, and to be fair all the sla printers I have used in the past, you get surprisingly much better build quality if you avoid placing things vertically and/or flat, or nearly so.  Counter-intuitive I know, but try it! Tip that console up so it is literally standing on one corner, so no edges are parallel with the build bed. It works because every layer is then only slightly bigger or smaller than the one underneath, rather than some no different and some drastically different, and the effect is a much more even finish.  I avoid having parallel surfaces to the platform like the Plague!!!

 

Crack on though, excellent project!

 

Hi Tim! That's really food for thought there.... excellent tip! I'll be sure to do that very next print. Thank you!

 

47 minutes ago, airscale said:

Hi Craig,

 

If it helps, I would join aircorps library - they have every drawing of every component for many aircraft including the B17

 

What I do is find the drawing, copy it into coreldraw

then find a measurement given on the drawing- say it''s 4 inches ( even if i find a part within a part drawing to get that from)

convert this to mm @ 101. 6mm

divide by 32 = 3.175mm

then draw a box on your drawing in corel that goes between the two measured points

look at the dimensions, say it's 14.933mm

tell corel you want that box to be 3.175mm

corel than says you have scaled it by 21.2%

then finally scale the entire drawing by 21.2% and you end up with a scale version of your part

 

I do this all the time so I can print out something as reference, or find a dimension I need - I did it with your pedestal below - drawing number 65-5690..

 

 

If you followed that it's quite a useful process - there are no dimensions on this drawing so I used a control wheel to scale from - hope its accurate

 

All the best

Peter

 

Hi Peter!

 

Wow what a spin out.... that's exactly the drawing I used! I actually did join aircorps library a while ago, but they must've added the B-17 stuff since then, as I didn't see any of this. I'll have to go back on there, as I have the 10,000 odd un-arranged scans, which is a nightmare to look through! I did draw it straight over this drawing, so I must've stuffed up something in my original calculations for the scale, as I normally do the same thing, but scale in Rhino as a background bitmap. Interestingly enough though, the height you came up with there is nearly the same as what I ended up getting on the second go, so I guess that means my good old mk1 eyeball is still going pretty good for calibration!

 

Thanks for the tip though! I'm going back to aircorps library now to go hunting for drawings

 

Cheers!

 

Craig