Rube Goldberg Lander

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The transitions for the Pods needed hardening and sealing so were drizzled with thin CA.

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The main transition and main nose cone got the CA treatment as well.

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I did the CA work in the garage. I opened the garage door and the windows. I set up a fan to pull the fumes away from me. I just barely survived the experience.

I think I am going back to Marc G's Teamwork approach!
 
Before I left town for a church conference, another box arrived from Semroc!!!!

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It`s like Christmas everyday at your place John !

And who doesn`t like that ?


Paul T
 
Before leaving town, I wanted to get some work done on the lander. One of the first things needed before accurately starting to chop things up was to mark the base tubes of the pods at 180 degrees. A strip of paper was wrapped around a tube and marked when it met itself. The strip was then doubled over to the mark and folded so that 180 and 360 degrees were easily discernible. The strip was then taped to the end of the tube.

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The strip was then wrapped around the tube and marks were placed on the tube at the folds.

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An Estes Angle was then used to extend the marks the length of the tube.

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This project requires lots of mitered cuts. To make these cuts, I used the Rocket Template Widget I downloaded from EMRR several years ago. This does the job well but, as will be seen, was also the cause of several problems and some wastage.

A template for a 45 degree cut was printed out and folded in half so that the midpoint could be aligned with one of the tube marks.

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The template was then taped in place at the end of one of the pod bases aligning the high point with one of the marks on the tube.

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A BT50 mandrel was then inserted into the tube to ease the cutting process.

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A sharp X-acto was then used to make the cut.

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A balsa plug was then inserted into the freshly cut tube so that its end was flush with the tip.

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A pencil was then used to trace out the outline of the cut on the balsa. The 180 and 360 points were also marked.

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The cutting process was then repeated on the angled boom tube meant to intersect the pod base.

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HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!!!

But I'll have to post that after the day's conference is over.
 
Oh come on man! We are dying to see what she is going to look like!!

Not nearly as much as I do!

Rocsim can't handle it and my CAD drawings are just of individual components. She already looks different than my imagination says.
 
It looks like we are venting rocket components into space, A and B buses have left town and sodmeister is crying like a little girl.

Its the D bus that worries me. Its the one from here to the convention center. I'd rather drive but, this year, the nearest parking might as well be back at the motel.

Don't worry about Sodmeister. He just found out that one of the rivets on his Pershing is 2.6 microns off.

Man I wish I had those skills!
 
HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!!!

But I'll have to post that after the day's conference is over.

The day's conference is now over and I guess its time to come clean.

Before leaving town, I grabbed some of the parts for this project and put them in the car not knowing whether I would have the chance to do any work on it or not. As it happens, I did and I noticed a problem after I was over three hours away from home and my shop.

The recovery pods were to be joined to the booms at a 45 deg angle.

I printed out the template from the Template Widget and set the angle to 45. When I looked at actually mating the two tubes, however, the result was a 90 deg angle. I then had a vague memory that the Widget does not consider the angle I want to achieve; it considers the angle of the miter. In effect, it uses the half angle.

The bad new is than my cut pieces would not work. The good news is that there was still plenty of room to cut a 22.5 deg angle in the tubes. The worst news was...

...well, you'll have to wait a bit for that!
 
The entire procedure was repeated on the pod base using the 22.5 degree template.

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I did the same with the previously cut boom tube.

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What the hell is that?? Oh, I get it . I know what that is !! What in the hell is that??? Nevermind, I built one of those before.---WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING??
 
Even while the cutting was in progress, something seemed off. Of course, I did not realize the problem until after the deed was done. Sure enough, the two tubes mated to form a 45 deg angle. The stupid widget, however assumed that I meant a completely different reference as an index. The two cut tube were not useless. What I really needed was the half angle (67.5 deg) of the supplement of the 45 (135).

I needed to cool down for a bit.
 
For me, cooling down meant working on a different part of this project which was difficult since all of the parts were in San Antonio. Fortunately for me, a store near my motel had just what I needed to cool down. They had a big box of ping pong balls. These were a vital part of my plans. They were needed to construct the ping reactors and the pong reactors.

The original plan was for 2 balls on each of the boom tubes. There was also a rough idea of perhaps two more on each of the four boom struts. With a box of 46 balls, I figured I had enough to experiment and actually learn how to do this.

My procedure I learned by asking here on TRF. I started by putting the end of a BT50 against a ball and marking the outline.

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An X-actor was then lightly drawn along the outline going a bit deeper each time.

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