Saturday, March 14, 2015

Third time's a charm

Photos of 3D prints always make them appear far more coarse than they do to my eye but this third print is now ready to test fly:

This took 14 hours to print so, at some point overnight whilst I slumbered, that region near the top of the fins suffered from at least a one layer gap.  My extruder is running very reliably after cleaning it out so I'm not sure why that happened.  To patch it I simply ran a bead of thick CA glue around the perimeter and the airframe feels solid. Even before the test flight there are already things I need to change: 1) The bottom ring needs to be wider to ensure the motor retention washers do not hang out beyond the airframe edge.  2) I'm using #8 machine screws there but I think I'll switch to long #6 diameter equivalent wood screws and size the pilot ports accordingly. Right now they are very narrow so I ended up drilling out a bunch of material to fit the #8s.  Again this should be good enough for a test flight... which I should have done today at Lucerne but I awoke wanting to continue sleeping instead.  3) There's a slicer setting in Simplify3D that's either "inside out" or "outside in" for shell print order.  I'm quite certain I used "inside out" above so I'll try "outside in" next time and hope that it minimizes exterior noise.  Now it's time to edit that vid...

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