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Duncan's got a Flea

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rtfm

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2008
Messages
3,900
Location
Brisbane, Australia
Hi,
Well, having had to set aside my Aeromax build for lack of funds to buy the next sub-kit, (which isn't cheap), I got re-inspired by all the talk about Fritz' Piojo. I've always liked the Pou's, so I've been reading as widely as possible, collecting design rules-of-thumb, trying to intersect these with academic reports, plugging numbers into spreadsheets - and playing around in Sketchup.

I have arrived at a little design which I think will be great. I worked hard at Fritz' concept of a sit-on-box - but couldn't get the bloody thing to work the way I wanted. So I reverted to a sit-in fuse. Tri-gear. Basic wing layout taken directly from the HM-293 - but I changed the wing plan a bit to look more "modern".

I decided that if I were to build the little plane, I would need to gather some hands-on building experience, so I grabbed some 3mm MDF sheets I had in the workshop, and together with some 20mm x 20mm pine, began building a full-size "proof of concept" or practice fuselage. Just as well I was using cheap materials, because I wasted quite a lot of material making mistakes. But I was sufficiently happy with the results to take some of my meagre funds and I ordered a few sheets of 1.5mm AA grade plywood, and some lengths of 19mm x 19mm Hoop Pine.

I'm waiting for the wood to arrive (2 week delay). So, this morning I resurrected my copy of DevMold, and spent a pleasant hour or two developing a mold from my Sketchup files. And this is what I have so far:

DevFuse 1.gifDevFuse2.gifDevFuse3.jpgDevFuse5.gif

I strongly doubt that a composite fuselage will be as light as a wooden one, but I was intrigued by the capability of the software. These are STL files. However, I have some terribly basic questions regarding STL files, and what one does with them. It strikes me that I may be able to use just the turtledeck with the wing cut-out as well as the cowl area and fix these onto the wooden fuselage. Dunno.

Question: OK, so now I have pretty looking STL files. What do I do with them? Take them so someone with a - what? - milling machine? CNC router? How does that work? Do I have to slice the thing into pieces and get each CNC'd separately? I have absolutely no idea what one does next.

Help?

Duncan
 
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