HubertB

Thank You Ernie. In fairness, when I started this design, there was not even the Kingfisher kit available, so tehre was no 1/32 R-985 at al on the market, be it injected - the Williams' kits representation is not that accurate), or AM. The KH Kingfisher engine is not bad, but I dare say my design is vastly superior . Especially as the first printing trial turned out beautifully. The only glitch I encountered is that my slicing software was unable to cope with 9 cylinders in one go (each .stl file for a cylinder is 318 Mb big), but that was overcome by having split printing runs. But all the parts turn out incredibly well, especially as the printer is a (very very good neverthless) less than USD 500 piece of hardware ! Ron should be happy for his Beaver kit . Here is a pic of the printed components, fresh out of the curing process. The resin is Anycubic's transparent green for those that want to know. Not only reasonably priced and easily available, but excellent on the details' rendering (some details like bolt heads are 0.3 mm in dia, and the cylinder cooling fins' thickness is 0.15 mm ), even though the color is a bear to photograph. (click on the pic if you want to see it bigger) It's a very good way to start the day, I tell you Hubert

The more I use my 3D DLP printer, the more I realise that resins have a HUGE impact on print quality. I am not suprised that this yellow resin yields superior finesse in printing. I am not yet through my (costly) voyage of trying different resins, but this is worth a « Hints & Tips » subject in its own . In the meantime, my « tweaking » of the R-985 design resulted in an extra 6 (or 8 ?) hours of work, but I can call the design project « finished ! ». Now begins the printing trials, which most likely will be beyond the capacities of my printer, requiring re-designing for less scale-accurate detailing ... Hubert

It will be my pleasure, Ron. I just need to tweak the design of two components on the cylinder (thought about this tweak after my posting) and do the intake pipes. PM me your email address and you’ll get the files during the course of next week. The design is in 1/32, but I am sure it will withstand scaling up to 1/24. If anything, it will be easier to print in this scale. It will look much better than your current alternative anyway Hubert

Well, to continue on the virtual workbench drift, I have, as I indicated above, extracted my R-985 design from the SOD. Close to 6 years ago, I stalled at the design phase of the (complex) cylinder's head. With renewed energy on the use of Solidworks, and the help of excellent pictures I found on the net this week, I could redo the design of the full cylinder, as follows. Needless to say it is a very compex shape, with multiple planes and angles, and this is worth a few hours of work in front of the screen ... And assembled with the rest of the engine, designed 6 years ago : The eagle-eyed among you will spot that the full engine is still missing the manifold-to-head intake pipe. But that's an easy-peasy one to add, I dare say It now remains to see whether my home 3D-printer will be able to cope with the finesse of the details If yes, a fun fact is that the #2 of the long series of the R-985s was used successively on: - The Gee Bee model Z, which I have - The Gee Bee R-2, which I also have - Then the "Spirit of Africa" Sikorsky S-39 which I had started to scratch some time ago (and will now try to design, at least for some components, in 3D). So, if the print is succesfull, I will have plenty of uses for it ! Hope you like it. Hubert

1000 % with the Felixstowe, Ernie. Besides my interest for the bird triggered in the 80s by a fantastic set of drawings published on Scale Models, and the bewilderment of a dream come true when WnW released theirs, your build is the one that convinced me I could also do something (probably just passable ) with my kit. But the Lanc is « not bad ar all » Hubert

I take your word that there are amazing resources available there, from what I have seen many times through others. And that sometimes it helps people build a better world, whichever way this is ... On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of the obnoxious impact of FB, enough that I am using my only power, which is to decide not to feed the monster. The examples range from the Australian lock-down of late, to the self-feeding algorithms that help build bubbles of disinformation and conspiracy theories in which people loose their final remnants of common sense and become zombies living in an alternative world detached from reality, to the bullies of all kinds flourishing in all groups, to your private life being exposed to anyone, to the « let-go » for racism, sexism, hate and violence, to ... FB posted $ 11 bn of profits in the last quarter of 2020. We are facing a situation of monopolistic behaviour to serve individual and corporate greed. I can do two things to this: not participate if I can (consumer power is still a very potent weapon) and encourage governments to reign in on the monopoly ... Enough of the rant ... let’s go modelling ! Hubert

Exceptional ! Hubert

Thanks for the links, Andrea. Btw, I am of the school that refuses to use Facebook Hubert

Looks like you have a nasty crack in that windscreen, Ernie. Hubert

We’re with you buddy, stay strong. Hubert

Whilst this is further helping the procrastination on the PZL P11c, I have followed on my Solidworks impulsion, and resumed work on my 1/32 P&W R-985 design. I had stalled on the design of the cylinder's head, as I was struggling to understand how it was done really. Resuming this has prompted a new internet searches and I stumbled on a set of perfect photographs of just the cylinder yesterday evening. Now I know how it looks and have to figure out how to render it realistically, and ina printable form, in 1/32 ! With a full R-985, this opens up the possibilities I have, and will help me finish some projects, like the Gee Bee R-2 (Williams' reproduction of the R-985 of the R-2 was suboptimal), like boosting my Kingfisher, like resuming a scratchbuilt Sikorsky S-39, like designing a few other Golden age iconic aircrafts, like dreaming about a full 1/32 Beech 18, like improving or redoing from scratch a Staggerwing, like ... Ok, you get the drift of how I can carried away Hubert (PS: I still do not understand why the R-985 was not done by any AM manufacturer in 1/32 ) (PS2 : 3D printing is not a magical, easy stuff, at least if you are dumb like I am. Here is just a small glimpse of this week's rejects or print failures at the bottom of my waste bsket )

Was it a Golden Age civilian ? Hubert

Good you prevailed on those pesky decals, Mike, because the result is truly outstanding. Just need a coat of marine vanish to make it look like a Riva or old (pre-gel coat) Chris Craft Hubert

« Ce serait donner de la confiture à des cochons » Hubert

Methink you guys must have been particularly naughty to incur the wrath of the elements Hubert

Good to see ou back, Peter, and, more importantly, that your predicament seems under control. Go for this Sufa ! We’ve got your six. Hubert

Get well soon Harv. Hubert

None of these. I believe, if I understand your question right, this is just a parallax issue with the pic. Here are two pics with the two halves taped together and the cockpit inside. Hubert

Thank you Carl. Well, after the renderings, how about some real stuff ? I have chosen a clear green resin, that produces more defined and more precise details, but it's a bear to photograph, so the pics are less than optimal, but hopefully you will be able to see something. (Btw, I printed two cockpits and the cowling on the same run, as I had the room) First pics: the complete cockpit, fresh out of the printer, still with printing supports in. I had to print it "flat" vs the support plate, otherwise the supports were just intextricable from the part itself. So here you can see the lines of the different layers, and the anti-aliasing that smoothes out the square nature of the pixels used to produce a slice image is less efficient. And after a first-level cleaning of the supports and separation from the printing base (I still need to clean/file away the remnants of the supports : And an additional benefit of doing the design from A to Z : the fit can be precise, with just the eventual variations linked to different retraction percentages of the different resins. Which means the cockpit structure fits snugly in the printed fuselage : Whilst printing these, I am also learning the art of getting the best out of the printer, together with its idiosyncrasies (which means I have had a - significant - number of failures. Let's say the wasted resin is a worthwile investment ) I have thus found out that the best way to get a result with the cowling is to print it "vertical", and assume I will have to smooth the visible layering with sanded primer.... Can I say I feel pretty smug about the results of today's printing ? You bet I do ! Now, let's hope I do not botch the paintwork when its time comes ... ... Hubert

Not a physical bench, but rather the virtual one ... A bit of background. In 2015, Lone Star Models released a 1/32 kit of the Travel air Mystery Ship, in resin. Of course, I jumped on it, and started it in earnest. But, even if the kit is worth it for the extensive decal sheet alone (yeah, I know, a bit steep for a decal sheet, but who has not already spent too much on some AM for a kit ?), my expectations soon came to a crash-landing. The kit was wrong in many areas. The most noticeable error is the shape of the fuselage. The Mystery Ship was initially designed around an in-line 300 Hp engine. When the engine project flopped, the designers, Burnham and Rawdon, who had initiated the design without their boss Walter Beech knowing it, fell back on a bulky Wright J6-9 radial - at that time Travel Air had just been integrated into the giant Curtiss-Wright corporation, in the 1929 pre-Black Thursday frenzy of risky leveraged acquisitions and consolidations. With the big Wright J6-9, the smoothly-faired, thin, fuselage designed around an in-line 6 had to be adapted by adding side bulges (a bit like the revamped battleships of the era) to recover an aerodynamic shape. The bulges started aft the engine mount/firewall, and came to the original fuselage shape at about the level of the cockpit headrest/wing trailing edge. This resulted in a distinctive kink of the fuselage line, when viewed from the top or rear. LSM have designed theit kit with a continuous, straight line, which is wrong for the Mystery Ship (but not necessarily so for the Texaco ship). So it had to be redone. Plus the wing profile was wrong, too thin to fit the wing-stubs, and definitely not like the RAF-34 airfoil that was used, with its flat underwing. I started modifying the left fuselage by building up the bulge with Milliput, then sanding and thinning the inside to get a thinner shell that would accomodate the (missing) tubular structure of the cockpit As the work was frankly tedious, I had the idea of redesigning the fuselage and wings in 3D on Solidworks, for subsequent 3D-printing. I did all this work, plus also a correct Wright J6-9 engine, and a correct windscreen, and modified stabs, rudder, and elevators ... Then it stalled because I could not, at that time, print the fuselage to its designed specs with an FDM 3D-printer. And then I moved to Portugal, when my PC with Solidworks was in the office in France, and, when I was there, I had no time to do 3D-design work Anyway, fast-forward to end-2020. I had the idea to rapatriate the PC to Portugal, and also acquired an EPAX 3D DLP printer, which could do what the Anycubic Photon, with its "wobble" on the Z-axis, could probably not do, i.e. print the fuselages and wings (only just in size, btw) The saying is that, once one knows how to ride a bicycle, it is forever ... Well, not so much with Solidworks ! The re-learning curve was steep ! And here I am, now, with a new part designed for 3d-printing, i.e. a complete cokpit ! It will maybe be tougher to paint, but it beats gluing tiny plastic rods together, well at least that's what I hope. And this is what is on my virtual bench now (renderings so far) : Btw, here are the renderings for the Wright engine, sans exhaust stubs. I had it (successfully) printed outside in a few examples at the time. I'll start a WiP thread soon, after I have finished my P11c, however. Hubert

Nice build, Tom. Well done ! However, if I may, the LG legs are at a strange angle compared to the original. I’d say you have glued them too « vertical » viewed from the profile. Great result nevertheless ! Hubert

I do not know which I am most flabbergasted at: your exacting devotion to detailing, or your figure painting skills ... Hubert

She’s already a beauty, even without its wings. Hubert

Outstanding. The structure for the rear sprocket wheel looks somewhat « flimsy » for such a heavy duty behemoth. Hubert

I can store two stacks of the smaller boxes on the 60 cms deep shelves ... Hubert