What did you do rocket wise today?

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Making some progress on the CNC router project. This thing is bigger than I envisioned...which is a good thing.
That'll cut some big fins. :)

Me: Hit refresh a bunch of times on the Jolly Logic page in hopes the Altimeter Four would show up in time for me to get one for this weekend.

I also built another Eggfinder Mini tonight. This one will go in one of my kids' new Formula 38s.

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I am a mere Padawan, but Fusion 360 enables even the weakest Jedi.

So you are saying that Fusion 360 is step towards the Dark Side? Funnily enough, I have a colleague who looks at it kind of that way. A master machinist who thinks the motorized knee was step in the wrong direction. He finds the whole idea of home CNCs and laser cutters and 3D printers to be distasteful. To be honest, I kind of see his point. There are many things that I will never know how to do properly or well because somebody at Autodesk has figured out how to make the mill do them well enough, and I have little patience for that kind unearned power in my own field. Still, it is an amazing thing to have a robot that can precisely and repeatably cut complicated shapes.

I am probably not too much farther along on the learning curve -- say Yellow Belt/Second Class Scout -- but I spent the summer figuring out how to model and cut air-foiled fins. Post when you are ready to make chips, I have F360 files I can share.

F360finscrnshot.jpgfins.jpg

In fact, I know k'tesh archives OR files here, but is there a thread on the forum to share CAD/CAM files?
 
So you are saying that Fusion 360 is step towards the Dark Side? Funnily enough, I have a colleague who looks at it kind of that way. A master machinist who thinks the motorized knee was step in the wrong direction. He finds the whole idea of home CNCs and laser cutters and 3D printers to be distasteful. To be honest, I kind of see his point. There are many things that I will never know how to do properly or well because somebody at Autodesk has figured out how to make the mill do them well enough, and I have little patience for that kind unearned power in my own field. Still, it is an amazing thing to have a robot that can precisely and repeatably cut complicated shapes.

I am probably not too much farther along on the learning curve -- say Yellow Belt/Second Class Scout -- but I spent the summer figuring out how to model and cut air-foiled fins. Post when you are ready to make chips, I have F360 files I can share.

View attachment 330224View attachment 330225

In fact, I know k'tesh archives OR files here, but is there a thread on the forum to share CAD/CAM files?

I prefer to think of it not as the dark side, but the shiny side. I will never be a master machinist, and that is why I like my 3D printer and will surely like my router. Those are really nice fins, and precisely profiling fins is one of the reasons I wanted to build this thing, so I will definitely reach out once this guy is built and operational. That will probably be into 2018 at the rate I go.
 
I prefer to think of it not as the dark side, but the shiny side. I will never be a master machinist, and that is why I like my 3D printer and will surely like my router. Those are really nice fins, and precisely profiling fins is one of the reasons I wanted to build this thing, so I will definitely reach out once this guy is built and operational. That will probably be into 2018 at the rate I go.

<grin> I understand. If we hadn't been snowed in for most of week in January the Shapeoko would probably still be in boxes in my garage.

As for what I did rocket-wise today: a MESS of centering rings and bulkheads. I also worked a bit on a design for a two stage rocket with a finless sustainer.

centeringringsforviperandbadger.jpg
 
<grin> I understand. If we hadn't been snowed in for most of week in January the Shapeoko would probably still be in boxes in my garage.

As for what I did rocket-wise today: a MESS of centering rings and bulkheads. I also worked a bit on a design for a two stage rocket with a finless sustainer.

View attachment 330248

Are you using hardboard as your spoiler board?
 
Are you using hardboard as your spoiler board?

It's actually a piece of plywood scrap, sitting on top of the spoiler (wasteboard). The MDF wasteboard on the Shapeoko is structural -- it is screwed to the frame to provide rigid support. I have been using a piece of 3/4" MDF on top of the spoiler as a supplemental wasteboard -- facing it every so often to keep it square and parallel to the carriage. The last piece I had on there was pretty chewed up and I was having a hard time holding the narrow centering rings down for the inside cut (I shot a couple of them across the shop). I did not want to take the time to cut another piece of MDF, so I grabbed this scrap off the pile. It is recovered flooring from a cargo trailer, papered on both sides so it looks a little like hardboard in the picture. It is dead flat and parallel, so it works pretty well for this application -- but it is really hard so I will probably replace it with MDF before I have to mill anything else that requires long or deep through-cuts.

I am working on a waste-board with t-tracks for work holding, but I am thinking it will mostly be used to hold a supplemental wasteboard when I cut thin pieces like this.
 
Waiting patiently for my eggfinder mini and LCD kit to arrive.

I received a small electronic dice kit as a birthday present last week, so it seemed like a good idea to use this to break in my new soldering station and board holder...

ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1508399710.804116.jpg
ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1508399722.184651.jpg

Oh, and the 10x loupe @cerving recommended makes for a good macro lenses on my iPhone...

ImageUploadedByRocketry Forum1508399801.290698.jpg
 
Waiting patiently for my eggfinder mini and LCD kit to arrive.

I received a small electronic dice kit as a birthday present last week, so it seemed like a good idea to use this to break in my new soldering station and board holder...

View attachment 330257
View attachment 330258

Oh, and the 10x loupe @cerving recommended makes for a good macro lenses on my iPhone...

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I love the board holder! Where did you find that?


Sent from my iPhone using Rocketry Forum
 
That is just way too cool. Just love all the new technology available nowadays. Back when I was doing this as a teenager we had to slave over a linoleum countertop with an exacto knife or try to cut stuff out on the bandsaw in shop class. Thank you President Kennedy for this marvelous peace dividend from the Space Race!

Not to sound presumptuous, but by chance would you consider doing custom work for fellow model rocket enthusiast? Could be a profitable little cottage business.


Making some progress on the CNC router project. This thing is bigger than I envisioned...which is a good thing.

 
That is just way too cool. Just love all the new technology available nowadays. Back when I was doing this as a teenager we had to slave over a linoleum countertop with an exacto knife or try to cut stuff out on the bandsaw in shop class. Thank you President Kennedy for this marvelous peace dividend from the Space Race!

Not to sound presumptuous, but by chance would you consider doing custom work for fellow model rocket enthusiast? Could be a profitable little cottage business.

I may take on some work down the road, but I would have to really have things down before I would be willing to make stuff for others. That will take some time. If you need custom CNC work I believe Nat Kingsley (I think that is his name) is still active with Upscale CNC. I don't have his contact info though.

I think the thing that has enabled me more than any other technology is YouTube. You can find anything on there...including the instruction video for building this CNC from commercially available parts. I learned CAD with Autodesk's channel, 3D printing from 3D Maker Noob and others...just a really empowering thing for people curious to learn something.
 
I may take on some work down the road, but I would have to really have things down before I would be willing to make stuff for others. That will take some time...

Winston Moy has a pretty good series of videos about his first attempt at (small scale) mass production with a CNC.

... by chance would you consider doing custom work for fellow model rocket enthusiast? Could be a profitable little cottage business.

I won't speak for other tool owners here, and I certainly don't want to discourage you from commissioning custom work, but I can tell you why I haven't given it any serious consideration.

The CNC provides two advantages; precision and automation. Its the automation part that might make it profitable.

Setting up a job on the CNC can be pretty time consuming. Between modeling and setting up the tool-paths, I spent more than 2 hours on the centering rings pictured upthread. Prepping the tool took about 20 minutes. Then about 30 minutes to complete the cut and get the pieces off the tool. That was a lot of overhead for a very a simple job; single sided, and all cut with a single endmill.

It was my whole morning getting the first set made. If there was a market for Estes PSII 2" to PSII 2.5" centering rings (the most "custom" thing in that job), I could turn out a lot of them in a day. If I was only going to sell the few that I cut yesterday -- between my time, materials, and wear-and-tear on the tool -- they'd be prohibitively expensive.

I am still learning how to do this, but right now I could model a set of airfoil fins from scratch in one or two hours. Setting up the tool paths might be another hour. Cutting would be 30 minutes to 2 hours per side, depending on the size and number of parts -- and would require some number of manual end mill changes.

The Shapeoko XL has 33" by 17" of useable cutting area (which is a lot for a home CNC) which limits the number of multiples I could produce in one pass.

For example: I cut two simultaneous sets of the fins on the orange BT300 rocket you can see in the corner of the image I posted here. I was able to cut those double-sided, which saved space on the wasteboard -- but meant manually flipping the workpiece and repeating about half of the cutting operations (so more time tending the machine). The fins on the BT60 copper-colored rocket were cut single-sided and assembled like clamshells -- If I'd needed them, I could've cut two sets at once. The fins laid out on the bench between the rockets have a span of 13 cm and a root light of 11 cm. I need four fins. With some creative packing, I could probably fit 8 pieces into the cutting available area, but I was not able to cut a complete set from a single piece of 12 x 24 plywood.

There are other constraints; for example the thickness of a piece of 3mm (nominal) aircraft ply might vary by ±.25mm from one end of the piece to the other. For precise thickness cuts (like the tabs on the fins that will fit into dados cut into centering rings) this reduces the effective cutting area for a single job.

All of which is to say, you could buy a pretty nice kit from Madcow or LOC for what I'd charge you for a set of custom fins (again, I won't speak to how others might price their labor).

OTOH, it has occurred to me to run off a batch the of "formers" for clones of the Centuri X-24 bug lifting body. Just because I want to make one, but I haven't yet had a job where I could fit it onto the stock with the other parts I was cutting.
 
Pounded my head against the wall all night trying to get my two Eggfinder Minis working. My full sized one gets a lock quickly. My Minis (a new one and one I build & tested a while ago) won&#8217;t get a gps lock for some reason...even the one that previously worked. The GPGGA NMEA line is getting to the LCD Rx and then Rocket Locator, but it&#8217;s never showing a good fix.

i&#8217;ll look at it some in the morning. I might just rig up a power supply and let them cook until they find themselves. Fourth five minutes straight today wasn&#8217;t enough though. Hmm.

I&#8217;m still deciding if I&#8217;m going to go to our Tripoli Vegas Oktoberfest launch tomorrow or just Saturday & Sunday. We&#8217;ll see.
 
My Minis (a new one and one I build & tested a while ago) won&#8217;t get a gps lock for some reason...even the one that previously worked. The GPGGA NMEA line is getting to the LCD Rx and then Rocket Locator, but it&#8217;s never showing a good fix.

Have you tried getting it outside and giving it a good view of the sky? See if that helps with satellite acquisition.
 
Yeah, I spent about an hour outside with my new Mini and 45 minutes outside with my older Mini.

EDIT: My previously known-good Mini has been outside for and hour & a half this morning. It has the time (which is better than last night), but still isn't showing a good fix. The GPGGA data is still mostly zeros. Still trying...

EDIT2: 2.5 hours and it never got past getting the time. Hmmm.

EDIT3: I build a third Eggfinder Mini this morning. It got a lock by the time I walked inside and turned on my Rx LCD. I soldered up a voltage & connector converter pigtail that'll connect the Eggfinder to some of my big quadcopter batteries. That'll give me a couple days worth of fiddling time before I have to charge it again. Sooooo...back to figuring out what's up with my previously-good Mini. I need that one to fly my Go Devil 29 this weekend.

EDIT4: My previously good Mini is now working. I didn't do anything except let it sit outside again. Maybe it just needed an almanac download & it was going slow about it. My other new Mini is still outputting mostly zeroes on GPGGA. I'm 3 for 4 Eggfinders though - progress!

EDIT5: With the help of Cris from Eggtimer and some brainstorming with Rob702Martinez, everything is solved. This post has the details.
 
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Built eggFinder RX and LCD modules.
https://www.eggtimerrocketry.com

Actually scratch that, my *kids* did most of the soldering, I get to do most of the bragging.
What started as "lets see how dad makes smoke at the table" quickly turned into "can I try it" and then into "no, it's my turn now". Next thing I know they were fighting over who gets to solder the next few leads.

First soldering jobs ever for both of them, and the eggTimer RX and LCD powered up and worked as advertised on the first try!
eggFinder RX + LCD.jpg soldering.jpg

TX-mini module is next.

Sorry, MissileWorks and Stratologger, looks like I will be ordering more supplies from ETR.
Gotta feed the soldering hobby flame burning!

Funny how that works...

a
 
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obviously didn't learn soldering skills from the same school of thought as I did, I've got this habit of cleaning the tip of my irons by wiping them across my pants...:)
Rex
 
Thanks and appreciate the resource. Have fun and enjoy!

I may take on some work down the road, but I would have to really have things down before I would be willing to make stuff for others. That will take some time. If you need custom CNC work I believe Nat Kingsley (I think that is his name) is still active with Upscale CNC. I don't have his contact info though.

I think the thing that has enabled me more than any other technology is YouTube. You can find anything on there...including the instruction video for building this CNC from commercially available parts. I learned CAD with Autodesk's channel, 3D printing from 3D Maker Noob and others...just a really empowering thing for people curious to learn something.
 
Trimmed my Astron Skydart so it has a tolerable deathspiral instead of an outright nose dive.


Also, after my mom sent me an Edible Arrangements for my birthday a few weeks ago, I discovered that their plastic fruit skewers make surprisingly adept epoxy applicators! The plastic doesn't bond well to the epoxy, but the fruit-sticking ribs help pick it up while wet, and allows it to drip off!

So for you rocketeers out there, considering getting your partner a "token of affection" and casually ask them not to throw away the skewers lol.
Its a win-win!
 
Continued working on my Demon 98 for the beginning of launch season. Was wondering if anyone had an rocksim file for it.
 
I was unable to work on rockets the last few days. But I did ponder the thought of this flying . 1021171621.jpg

Sent from my VS988 using Tapatalk
 
It was fly day today. I flew the top of my 4" Madcow Patriot on a 4" booster with three fins instead of four as well as a 54mm motor mount, although I only had a 38mm motor so I used an adapter and flew it on a AT J420 Redline. Nice flight. Video below.

https://youtu.be/dkjzdvAuS9E
 
Had lots of fun at Tripoli Vegas' Oktoberfest today. I'm going back for more tomorrow and bringing the kids to hopefully fly their Formula 38s.

I figured out what was going on with my 2 Eggfinder Mini's that weren't getting fixes the other day. Huge thanks to Cris from Eggtimer for troubleshooting my new Eggfinder Mini. The problem was just a bad GPS module. It sounds like I'm only customer #2 to have that problem. Thanks again to Cris for some great customer service.

The other (previously good) Eggfinder Mini problem was my fault. I was talking with Rob702Martinez about it today & decided to do some more troubleshooting. Out at the launch site, that Mini wouldn't get a lock again. I let it try for about 3 hours without any luck. I decided to put it away and worry about it another day...then I noticed that the power wires for the Eggfinder and the Quark were running over the top of the GPS antenna. Here's what they looked like:

IMG_3700.jpg

I pushed the wires to the side (how I originally had them routed) and plugged it back in. It got a lock in about 30 seconds. Woohoo! To verify that was the problem, I turned off the power & moved the wires back over the GPS antenna. Again, it wouldn't get a GPS fix even after about 10 minutes of trying. I unplugged it, moved the wires back out of the way and plugged it in again. The GPS got a fix right away. Sooooooo...don't route power wires over a GPS antenna (duh, I know). I'll secure the wires out of the way.

IMG_3699.jpg

I also designed a drill guide for my 3d printed sled that fits in Madcow 38mm VK nose cones. The goal with it is to have the sled be movable between rockets with similar nosecones (I have 3 now). Printing it now...

Screen Shot 2017-10-21 at 10.31.53 PM.png
 
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