As I mentioned in the last post, I wanted to get my 3D printer (“Bob”) back to work.  I really like the idea that while I’m working on the house getting it ready to sell, I can have Bob hard at work concurrently making stuff for the plane build, machining CNC conversions or just for fun.

To get some airplane production rolling [albeit mostly cosmetic], I decided to spend an estimated 45 minutes updating the Fusion 360 CAD file for my NG-30 upright/Napster bulkhead cap, the initial version (green) shown mounted in place below during my last trip to the hangar.

I of course planned on there needing to be multiple revisionary updates for this top cap since there a number of angles and a major curve involved.  

And not surprisingly, my 45 minutes turned into almost 2 hours . . .  oh, well!

Nonetheless, I persevered and was rewarded with a hard fought version 2 of the NG-30 upright/Napster bulkhead top cap.

If you compared the 2 versions, you’d see that I did in fact drop the overall height of this top cap down 0.15″ to provide some required clearance with the nose hatch cover.  

I did about 5 other tweaks, including bringing the front corners forward about 0.020″ while leaving the center at the same dimension.  This then requires the major upside “U” curve already in place, and then another very minor, shallow curve from the top looking down from each corner aft 0.020″ to the original center plane on the front edge.

I also dropped the back edge down 0.100″ while leaving the front edge the same height. This required an angle on each side… you can see the rough steps –from the draft quality 3D print– of the resulting side angles in the pics above.

It will be interested to see how this version fits, and much like the instrument panel I suspect just another round or two of tweaks and it should be dialed in to its final configuration.

I finally spent a few hours today getting “Bob” (my 3D printer) back on his feet after his major brain/heart/liver/lung etc. transplant…. ha! 

I had received the new Extruder motor driver chip in the mail while on this last trip down to NC so I finally got around to installing it. I then tweaked the power setting (Vref) to finally get the proper amount of filament going through the extruder (E-steps), but still had to do a minor hack in the firmware settings to get it close to spot on. 

Not perfect in what should be normal ops (now the extruder is a bit louder than it should be… will slowly get some feedback via forums and do some further diagnostics), but the outcome was very good. 

I did a test print of the little #6 nut tolerance checker (no pic here) I made up –which was majorly failing due to major under-extrusion before I installed this latest extruder motor driver chip. After dialing in the filament extrusion I finally got my first good print after my massive overhaul of the printer.

Since Bob’s been a bit lazy lately (offline) . . .  I took the opportunity to get something printed while I worked on the house to prep it for sale [the main reason I wanted to get the 3D printer back operational!]. 

I cleaned up one end of the rectangular tube that will make up the X-axis motor mount/housing on the CNC’d lathe (I snagged it from the hangar this last trip). I then took measurements on the clean end and in about 10 minutes had a CAD drawing sketched up in Fusion 360 for a top cap that will help keep the dust, chips and swarf out of the pulley assembly and belt that will be internal to this mount.  

Here’s the cap just after it finished printing:

And here we have the cap installed inside the rectangular motor mount/housing tube.  It fit so well that I won’t print another one until I get bored with the white color!

I’m happy to have Bob back to work so that I can kick off prints and have them going while I’m working on the house!

Today I was able to test fit version 2 of my instrument panel cardboard mockup.  I’ll reiterate that I feel that it would be infinitely easier to simply trace out, cut a panel by hand and then mount it than it is to constantly fiddle with drawing up the instrument panel in CAD to fit the existing composite panel structure . . . again, especially at the top curve and leg cutout curves.

However, since I do have a bit of time available to do draw up and check the panel –since I’m still in the amazingly protracted process of moving down to NC– in the long run it will be so much better to have a match-fit panel available in CAD if I ever want to do any panel upgrades, improvements or overhauls.  The ability to plan and fit on “paper” in CAD will make any future (and has definitely been proven during current planning machinations…) upgrades or additions much, much easier to handle.

Clearly the major change between panel version 1 and panel version 2 is the notch made top centerline to incorporate the warning annunciator sub-panel.  Since we didn’t print out all the switch positions with the marker, it’s not easily identifiable to note that there are a couple fewer switches on the panel.

Panel version 2 fit much better than version 1, most significantly at the leg holes.  The top curve still offered up a few challenges, but that should be easily remedied but just one slight shaving in the upper left corner and lopping off about 0.030″ on the bottom corners just above each arm rest.  

In addition, I do plan on moving ALL the instruments and avionics up about 0.15″ to create a wider crosspiece just above the leg holes.

Although I didn’t get a shot of it, I also checked my 3D-printed model of the new style (to me) canopy latch handle structure.  I’m very pleased with the size & configuration of the new canopy latch handle and really do think it will work out really nicely and provide the required clearances with the F-15 throttle handle and the Garmin GNS-480 GPS.

I also checked out my one-off design for the NG-30 uprights’ hole cover.  I had to trim a bit off the bottom back edge for it to slide into place, which tells me I need to angle that piece.  

It fit generally well, but I do have a long list of tweaks that will need to be made for it to fit in a truly acceptable way.

One critical design change that I must make on this hole cover piece is that its height will have to be reduced at least by 0.1″ on the outboard edges.  When I tried to place the nose hatch cover back into place with this cover piece in place, there was a slight gap caused by the lack of clearance between the nose hatch door and this cover piece.

Still, I think I’m off to a good start and this will eventually get there design-wise as well!

I also did a fair amount of organizing and cleanup of the hangar, as well as an attempt to track down some hardware that is eluding me at the moment.  Overall, with my dimensional notes in hand as I head back north, it’s been a fairly productive trip build-wise.

I added this pic below after the original post… it’s a pretty good shot of the nose and canopy (I blocked out the face of my friends’ daughter, who wanted to sit in the plane, since they don’t care for pics of her on the internet).

While at Marco’s I spent well over an hour updating the remaining tweaks I had noted that my panel drawing required to fit properly as on overlay onto the existing composite panel structure.  The main areas that are difficult to dial in is the top curve and the leg hole curves, but after a bit I had them as close to what I wanted and was ready to print.

It took a bit more time for Marco to convert the Fusion 360 CAD generated G-code into a usable format for us since we have to have the plasma cutter stop after each drawn component so that we can lift the Sharpie, then position the print (plasma cutting) head to then drop the pen and draw the next component. 

Just as before on panel version 1, it was no real difficult feat and after a short bit of time Voila! We had panel version 2’s mockup drawn up on a large piece of cardboard.

I then spent another half hour cutting out the panel just before me, Marco, Gina, Chris Cleaver and his wife Mary Kay went out for some delicious fish tacos down near the Virginia Beach boardwalk.

Upon returning back to Marco’s I then set the warning annunciator sub-panel in place in the notch I had created in the upper centerline area of the instrument panel.  The fit was good, although I may need to scale down the gap just a touch between the main panel and sub-panel.

I’ll be heading down to the hangar in North Carolina tomorrow, so I’ll be able to do another test fit of the latest version of the panel. Clearly after just another round or two of panel fitting we should have it dialed in nicely and ready to cut the real panel out of 0.090″ thick 6061 aluminum.

For my latest haul down to North Carolina, this time around I decided to stop by Marco’s on the way down rather than my usual coming back from NC.

I met Marco at the Chesapeake Airport along with new Canardian Chris Cleaver and his freshly purchased Long-EZ built by none other than Mike Toomey.  If you’re not aware of the history, Mike Toomey and Terry Lamp (builder of Marco’s Long-EZ) were Long-EZ building buddies in Ohio, so the two planes share a lot of the same design DNA.

Within 15 minutes we were taxiing out to the runway and were airborne soon after.  

Here’s a smattering of pics that I took of Chris in his beautiful new Long-EZ.  With the location of Chesapeake Airport so close to the North Carolina line, nearly all these pics were actually taken in the northeast corner of North Carolina.

We were airborne for about 45 minutes before finally landing back at home base.

Here’s a video Marco made from my cell phone camera footage.

I will say that our little adventure definitely got me pumped up to get my bird finished!

I woke up today and still had the small batch of white filament that comes with the 3D printer loaded. So I quickly 3D printed out a copy of both the aft nose/avionics cover hinge pin, and just the knob itself, to test the fit & function on the panel. 

I had designed the knob to be both knurled and with a slot in the top end to use a quarter/coin to tighten/loosen it.  However, I was just a hair narrow on my sketched slot (had meant to confirm the thickness of a quarter) so a quarter wouldn’t fit. 

With the results of my newfound “test,” I set about working on the arduous 45 sec change in Fusion 360 so that the real one that I make will have the proper slot dimensions. 

Tested and confirmed all for ~0.11 cents worth of 3D printer filament!

As a reminder, here’s my rendered CAD version of the aft nose/avionics cover hinge pin.

Since I have no real furniture to speak of due to the move, normal places to put stuff gets tight…. and sitting on my “end table” (2x4s and plywood) was a scrap of paper that had the dimensions that I had measured up at the hangar for a cap (green thing above) that will enclose the top hole of the NG30s (circled in yellow below). 

I know, not a big deal in getting my plane flying, but since I’m currently in 3D printing mode, I figured I would start working up the model to tweak for just a few extra minutes at a whack every time I visit the hangar.  

As I was looking for something else, that piece of paper with the dimensions ended up on the floor.  Well, in my my attempt (read: frustration) to minimize the clutter, I sat down for 10 minutes and knocked out the CAD drawing for the initial version of that NG30 cap and then 3D printed it…. no need for that piece of paper anymore!

Here’s the blank topside of the NG30 cap. 

I do have the initial curved area for the top of the “Napster” bulkhead shaped into the piece, but I’m sure there’s another dozen or so more tweaks that will need to be made before the final version (which will have some type of label most likely), but like I said… with just a few minutes and some notes each hangar visit, I’ll slowly get it dialed in with the correct dimensions and shape.

Once again, my little 3D printer is definitely doing some good deeds!