wizzardworks
Well-Known Member
Well, hopefully I am attaching pictures. I selected 6 but ended up with 9. I started this project April 2012 with a surface only model in Rhino. The plane flew acceptably in X-plane so building started. I sectioned the model at 6" intervals to generate cross sections. The fuselage is being done as a top and bottom female mould. I used the cross section curves for the inner surface and added a vertical line 3" outside the shape and a bottom horizontal line at the height of the mould base. It turned out that further splitting the moulds into left and right parts required less material. I drew a 4' X 8' rectangle and drug and rotated all the sections into these rectangles in Rhino It took 27 sheets of plywood. Large format printing was expensive and not available locally so I bought a HP 110 Plus with a roll feed. The drawn sheets were done as 3 overlapping 24" sheets of paper joined with 2" cellophane tape on both sides. I positioned the taped sheets on the plywood and clamped one end. The pattern was then rolled up on 2" PVC pipe and a sloppy coat of wall paper paste rolled on the plywood. It took 6 gallons of paste. The paper unrolled very well and paste was added to the unclamped end. I found I could stack 3 pasted sheets with 2X4 spacers and have one more on the top of the plywood pile. It tool 7 work sessions to paste the patterns with the rest of the day CNC cutting the rotary engine patterns. The first picture is the 1/4 sections for the bottom mould.The second picture is a duplicate, oh well I am new to this. Picture 3 is also out of context and shows a router jig used to cut a dado in the top and bottom plates and strongbacks to locate the 1/4 templates which are screwed and glued with tightbond III. Picture 4 is one of the seventeen sheets with a part rough cut out with a skilsaw. Just straight lines to break the sheet into pieces that fit into my 18" band saw without a lot of grief. Picture 5 is the 1/4 templates for the top mould at the bandsaw stacked between the metal lathe and edge sander.Pictures 6 and 7 are duplicates of 4 and 5, oh well first try. Picture 8 shows some of the top flange parts cut with the skilsaw as was the strongbacks and bottom plates. Picture 9 shows a few sheets stacked up with patterns glued on. At this point it was early June. Next post will be two weeks of June. wizzardworks:lick:
