Bil Posted January 18, 2019 Share Posted January 18, 2019 I was going to wait to post this build thread until I got farther along, but thought that it might be a good complement to Garage21’s Sopwith Camel thread and kkarlsen’s amazing Fokker Triplane thread. By the way Kent, your build thread is what inspired me to start this build, so thank you. After working on my 1/16 scale Stearman and realizing that I had bitten off more than I could chew with my first model in decades, I lost interest and eventually stopped work on it a while back and decided to look for something that would excite me more and start again... maybe in a smaller scale with something a little simpler in order to move quicker. Then I saw Kent's Fokker Dr.I thread as mentioned and decided to jump back in. I decided on a 1:24th scale, built from scratch Fokker E.III from 1915: Jerry Boucher, the artist of the above Fokker E.I painting (© J.J.Boucher) kindly gave his permission for me to use it in my post. Please visit his website, his work speaks for itself in its quality and presentation: www.the-vaw.com This was a very simple aircraft and there are some excellent resources online... though I am going to have to recreate the scale drawings necessary to build this plane as there are no complete plans easily accessible online (that I have found). As you will see I will be building the aircraft in the computer in order to generate good usable scale drawings and then will use those as the basis for my build, which will mostly be plastic and resin, with brass and/or aluminum parts used as necessary. I will also be building many of the difficult parts and assemblies in the computer and using my 3D printer to supply them. This entails a lot of trial and error as you will see. For those interested I have an Anycubic Photon 3D printer which is an LCD (Digital Light Processing) DLP printer... basically the 3D model file is sliced into masks of varying size (set when setting up the 3D model), the light from the LCD shines through the unmasked portions of the 3D file hardening the printed part one layer at a time as the build plate rises from the resin tank. At the finest setting it can be set to an accuracy of .1mm, which provides amazing detail. Here is my 3D fuselage (frame only) model... I will discuss the fuselage assembly first: Fvdm, Kagemusha, sandokan and 7 others 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DonH Posted January 18, 2019 Share Posted January 18, 2019 I love your definition of "something a little simpler". 1/24 scratch built Fokker. My definition is 1/72 Airfix. KiwiZac, Bil, Alain Gadbois and 2 others 2 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BiggTim Posted January 18, 2019 Share Posted January 18, 2019 (edited) I will be watching this, as I just bought that printer! Looking forward to seeing how you make use of it!! What modeling software are you using? Compared to the two guys you mentioned above, my scratch Fokker feels crude, but it was fun. I expect you will make me shake my head in amazement as well. Tim Edited January 18, 2019 by BiggTim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bil Posted January 18, 2019 Author Share Posted January 18, 2019 Just now, BiggTim said: I will be watching this, as I just bought that printer! Looking forward to seeing how you make use of it!! What modeling software are you using? I use 3DS MAX.. I've been using it since version 1.. oh so many years ago. BiggTim 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BiggTim Posted January 18, 2019 Share Posted January 18, 2019 2 minutes ago, Bil said: I use 3DS MAX.. I've been using it since version 1.. oh so many years ago. Very cool, I have been wanting to learn that. I use Revit every day, and used Autocad for years, so I've been learning Fusion 360 for printing. Have you been following Scratchbuilder's thread on 3D printing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bil Posted January 18, 2019 Author Share Posted January 18, 2019 Fuselage Frame After a lot of research online I discovered that the drawings easily found online were not as accurate as I would like, so I decided to build it in 3D in my computer... then used that as the template for the physical model. This is the template drawing I generated from the 3D model. The color coding breaks down as follows: Light Blue - 3/64" plastic rod (main fuselage structure) Dark Blue - 1/16" plastic rod (Landing gear support) Green - 1/32" plastic rod (cowling internal support) Purple - 3/32" plastic tube (Tail surfaces support) For simplicity I decided to build this out of plastic...I originally had planned on using brass or aluminum, but decided that Plastic gives me a lot more flexibility and control, and is easier to work with. I bought a simple magnetic whiteboard (small) and some magnets... one type comes in a roll that I could cut and use as guides (see the image below), the other type are very strong map-magnets that I used to hold down clamps as shown. Once both side structures were completed my problem was how to keep it all square when adding the connecting structure... what I came up and why I am using a magnetic building board, was using the magnets and several 2" angles.. I used the clamps to pin the structure flat.. this insured the structure was square in width and height. Note that I am using the part of the plan marked TOP, this is because I am adding the structural supports for the top of the fuselage (it is top down in these images) As I moved down the fuselage, I had to slide the angles down and move the clamps at each frame station due to the curvature of the rear half of the fuselage. ... I then rotated the entire thing 180 degrees so I could do the same for the bottom structural supports. Note that I have moved the frame to the part of the plan marked BOTTOM. The completed fuselage frame: Alain Gadbois, Trak-Tor, LSP_Kevin and 6 others 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bil Posted January 18, 2019 Author Share Posted January 18, 2019 (edited) 24 minutes ago, BiggTim said: Have you been following Scratchbuilder's thread on 3D printing? Not really.. I looked at it a while back, but not recently. Edited January 18, 2019 by Bil BiggTim 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn M Posted January 18, 2019 Share Posted January 18, 2019 cool project Bill! 109, BiggTim and Bil 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcin_Matejko Posted January 18, 2019 Share Posted January 18, 2019 Well done Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SCRATCH BUILDER Posted January 18, 2019 Share Posted January 18, 2019 4 hours ago, BiggTim said: Have you been following Scratchbuilder's thread on 3D printing? Hey Bil, Well you not going to see the old thread, i accidentally deleted it trying to delete a post There's a few of us that have ANYCUBIC's now BiggTim 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BiggTim Posted January 18, 2019 Share Posted January 18, 2019 42 minutes ago, SCRATCH BUILDER said: Hey Bil, Well you not going to see the old thread, i accidentally deleted it trying to delete a post There's a few of us that have ANYCUBIC's now Haha!! Maybe one of the mods can restore it for you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bil Posted January 18, 2019 Author Share Posted January 18, 2019 (edited) Fuselage Bracing Points The first step for me in adding detail to the fuselage frame was adding the bracing points the rigging wires hang from. But first I had to sit down and research where these needed to go.. this was done with a combination of looking at photos of the reconstruction built in Germany (by a friend of mine, (Achim Engels) and the only surviving original that is in the British Science Museum in London. This photo is from Achim's reconstruction: ...this photo is from the original.. there were some differences between the reconstructed aircraft (above) and the one in the Science Museum, and in those cases I defaulted to the Science Museum photos as it is an original aircraft. This is my drawing... showing in red, all the locations of the bracing points for the fuselage rigging This image is a detail showing the rear of the fuselage being worked on (fuselage TOP is facing down on the building board): Next step for me is to "weld" these in using some home made old-school plastic-putty: Edited January 18, 2019 by Bil Gazzas, Alain Gadbois, williamj and 4 others 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted January 18, 2019 Share Posted January 18, 2019 2 hours ago, SCRATCH BUILDER said: Hey Bil, Well you not going to see the old thread, i accidentally deleted it trying to delete a post There's a few of us that have ANYCUBIC's now 1 hour ago, BiggTim said: Haha!! Maybe one of the mods can restore it for you? Done: https://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?/topic/70571-3d-printing/ Kev BiggTim 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted January 18, 2019 Share Posted January 18, 2019 Seriously good work, Bil! Kev BiggTim 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SCRATCH BUILDER Posted January 19, 2019 Share Posted January 19, 2019 Thanks Kevin, You can remove the other thread. Yes Bil coming along nicely, cant wait to see what you print BiggTim 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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