3D Printing Norm's SCAD file repository and 3D printing

[OzHybrid]

SCAD Transition Generator.
Have a play Any size to ANY size. All dimensions in mm

Aerofoiled internal connection bars to allow free flow of ejection gasses and allow hollow transition with connection without crushing.
Hex hole for easier printing. Adjustable hole diameter. Variable slot depth and width, bar shape scalable to go from round to aerofoiled.

 

[OzHybrid]

SCAD Lobed Triangular Rocket

It was a bit wet here in Oz.... Follow the wet yellow brick road....
I upscaled the original by 2.4 factor. It’s now 1.6 m high and halfway through printing. Will have a BT80 core. That’s half of the 763mm of nose cone on top. I’ll fibreglass the outside of the ring. 800 of body and the fin can is 169 high furthest part of ring is 145 from center so 290 dia volume wise ish.View attachment 502494

2nd half of nosecone is on printer now.... Very happy with this printer now it's had it's deficiencies resolved.
Main changes I've made are dual drive extruder, nickel plated copper block, 0.6mm nozzle and a couple of small changes to the vertical guides. ( not much really) Just about to increase print height from 390 to 500mm actual.
View attachment 502503
Update 30/1/22. And magically 8 hours later.
View attachment 502550
View attachment 502552

 

[Kelly]

Nice. Thanks for posting these!

 

[cwbullet]

Great job! I like how you included the attachment point.

 

[OzHybrid]

Great job! I like how you included the attachment point.

Yes, But I left the hole Hex but the relief ROUND..... Mwah ha haaaaaa

Can you allow .json files to be posted so we don't have to change the extension from .txt. They've got all the presets in them for the SCAD file and are only text anyway.
Norm

 

[OzHybrid]

Generic Nose Cone Generator
This is a very inefficient design. However shape wise it's amazing. Trade offs....
When you're creating these programs you have to ask yourself what is it I'm actually trying to create, how should I define a nosecone.
This nose is a blanket draped over a ball at the top, a variable geometry spheroidal object in the middle and a circle at the base. The spheroidal object can be made into a flat disc, Sphere, Rugby ball, egg shape, inverted egg shape. Top and bottom of spheroidal shape is independant
The ball can be a point(0.1 dia) or big like an egg lofter. You can make Honest John nosecones easily and a preset is included. Select your starting preset and wait 10 secs or so for it to render to the new shape. (I said it wasn't efficient)

I'll update the mating tube section later. At present it's basic.

 

[OzHybrid]

Updated the fin generator. Tip leading and trailing edges were wrong length and thickness. Fixed.
Added a section at the end so you could make the fin can a full motor mount. Done for Aspire but works for anything you want to use it for. Manual entry of sizes required at bottom part of programing section. Aspire below..... Aspire added to fin can as a preset.

 

[cwbullet]

Have you thought about an AV sled generator?

 

[cwbullet]

Have you thought about an AV sled generator?

Any new updates?

 

[OzHybrid]

Any new updates?

Been busy building...... I don't think there would be an easy answer to a sled generator. If the there were stl files of the various electronics bits, that would help.
I'll have a think.

 

[OzHybrid]

Electronics Bay Designer V1.0
change txt to json only one preset at present test.

 

[Handeman]

I changed the E-Bay Designer v1.0.txt file to E-Bay Designer v1.0.json and double clicked it. I get "How do you want to open this file?" window and the only choice is to "Look for an app in the Microsoft store"

I assume this is a Javascript program, but my java script isn't picking it up. Do you have any installation instructions, or better yet, an installer?

 

[OzHybrid]

I changed the E-Bay Designer v1.0.txt file to E-Bay Designer v1.0.json and double clicked it. I get "How do you want to open this file?" window and the only choice is to "Look for an app in the Microsoft store"

I assume this is a Javascript program, but my java script isn't picking it up. Do you have any installation instructions, or better yet, an installer?

Install Open SCAD. Open the scad ebay designer with it. json should be in the same folder. The json file only contains the settings for the presets. In this case there is only a test preset. No manufacturers have contributed any flight computer blocks. Installation instructions for SCAD can be found on the openscad.org site. I'd use the exe files on it with all the dependencies built in...

 

[jmasterj]

Updated the fin generator. Tip leading and trailing edges were wrong length and thickness. Fixed.
Added a section at the end so you could make the fin can a full motor mount. Done for Aspire but works for anything you want to use it for. Manual entry of sizes required at bottom part of programing section. Aspire below..... Aspire added to fin can as a preset.
View attachment 509568

I couldn't figure out how to make the shoulder to mate with the body tube. What values do I need to adjust to create that? Thanks!

 

[OzHybrid]

you need to enable the AddOn. remove the // from the front. Highlighted below.
It's not really set up for anything other than the Aspire as a full fit to inside a tube. The other settings are not accessible in the side panel. (Because it's not really set up for this type of fin can.)
FinCanID which is the same for the tube mate as it is for the 29mm motor in this specific example.
MotorL=128; (length of your motor)
ThrustRingL=6.1; (internally for your motor)
ThrustRingT=3.1; (thickness of the thrust ring)
JoinLength=25.1;(mating length into your body tube. In this case, it's also a motor mount tube size as the Aspire uses 29mm motor mount tube.

Is it the Aspire you're trying to get or something else? If it's something else, pm me a quick sketch( in mm) and I'll create a preset.
Norm

 

[OzHybrid]

160mm faceted nose cone. Print time 8 hours no support used 0.6mm nozzle.

SCAD model using generic nosecone generator and reducing facets to 12 $fn setting. I'll add a couple of pics.
Inside got a bit like a birds nest, but outside is OK No support took 2 hours off the print time.

 

[cwbullet]

nice

 

[OzHybrid]

I had to overcome a few printing issues. After a bit of time after the print started, I was getting underextrusion and massive print failures. The first layers would be good though. Normally the danger time zone.
Here's what I did to fix it and the things that made the situation worse.
Underextruding. Drive slipping on ABS.(common issue with ABS as it's a hard plastic.) Increased pressure from spring. Stepper motor then starts to skip. Check manual and increased bias voltage at stepper motor to recommendations found elsewhere. Drive motor getting pretty warm...(I'll come back to this) Stepper driver getting really hot and shutting down causing the stepper to skip but later on when it shuts down due to the driver chip temperature..... Fitted heatsink and a fan to it. Driver temp now OK. Checked the filament as it felt a bit rough. Inconsistent diameter and extruder putting deep drive marks on it. The deep drive marks were causing it to jam. These got deeper as time went on. Increasing the drive current made the extruder drive gears hotter. The filament was already warm coming from the sunlu drying box set to 50. As the extruder got hotter it was then able to put even deeper drive marks in it making the diameter larger and the jam worse as time went on.
So short version is , there was no single thing that caused the issue and some fixes that did contribute that I didn't see until now. Hope this helps someone else avoid this issue.

 

[OzHybrid]

Here's what it's going on to. Missing a couple of bits, but the weight and CP are the main thing. Haven't done the base drag fix to it. This will make CP further back. 2x G64 planned.

 

[Kelly]

How do you get the lip at the top of the shoulder, without supports?

 

[OzHybrid]

How do you get the lip at the top of the shoulder, without supports?

Depends on whether you want acceptable or perfect. For perfect I'd print the nose and shoulder seperately. Drop the nosecone through the print 0 level in Cura so only the top was up. Then rotate the nosecone and drop it down so only the shoulder was above, printing them separately.
In this case ,The nozzle was 0.6, I was printing at 0.65, it was set to print the inside wall first which gave it a bit to hang on to on the inside before the overhang was printed. There's some interesting work being done to print horizontal overhangs using an algorithm that develops a set of semicircular walls from multiple points until the overhang is filled in. I think the no support problem will be fixable very shortly with some software profile tweaks.
Here's the link to the Arc infill info. It has some issues with massive overhangs and shrinkage/springing at the outer points, but would fix a heap of normal use issues especially as a single lower layer where you wanted a flat top on something or a shoulder like for a nosecone.

 

[OzHybrid]

Rail button streamlined internal washer with printing support generator. As usual change the .txt to .json for the preset. If you do not want this to generate support, set support to 0. There is a test washer profile that will produce this. In your slicer make sure that print thin walls is enabled or you might not print the support. If you look at the code you'll find a lot of numbers have a single decimal place so 5.1 instead of 5 or 5.0. This allows the changes of size you make to be in 0.1 increments. Had the default value been set as 5 or even 5.0 the increments of change would have been 1 unless they were specifically defined with a range definition statement. That would have allowed a slider for the setting of that size, but would have limited the range to what I think you need. If I then had to cater for inches and mm there would be a 1:25.4 range in those values. That can cause a different set of problems. So define your own sizes. The top surface as you see it here is the face against the inside of the body tube.

 

[kalsow]

Rail button streamlined internal washer with printing support generator. As usual change the .txt to .json for the preset. If you do not want this to generate support, set support to 0.

Oops, I think you attached the .json file twice and missed the .scad file.

 

[OzHybrid]

Oops, I think you attached the .json file twice and missed the .scad file.

Fixed. Just trying to stop you from seeing the code Bill. You write much better code than me

 

[OzHybrid]

Plateful of 160mm centering rings, cluster rings for 1,2,3 motors, some 29mm retainers and some launch lugs. Cross your fingers and wait 9 hours. The clustering program angles the motors through whare you define the CG from the rear of the model. It's here somewhere...

 

[OzHybrid]

Sooo. There were a couple of things from the Printing Overhangs that struck me. The first is that Cura and probably the other slicers tend to follow the shape of the object you have an STL for. Who'd have thought? If you choose the correct object you'll get it to follow a different path if you use that object as a profile modifier in Cura.
So here's what I did.
Generated an object that is arc like for a shape that would be the lip on a nosecone at the bodytube transition. Like this...

Created an STL for the nosecone size and the thickness I want Cura to use it.
Threw a basic cone nosecone and the ring into Cura.

Placed both objects on the bed and then edited the x,y center of both objects to be the same. then changed the z position of the ring to be at the transition height. In this case 5mm.


Then with the Support for Nosecone model still selected, click on Per Model settings and select cutting mesh.


Click-Select settings
Select all the following settings
Infil density(100%)
Infil Pattern (circular)
Infil Layer Thickness ( same as print thickness)
Flow(95%)
Outer Wall Flow (95%)
Infill Flow(120%)(your infill flow is really your walls-ish. It's a horizontal wall rather than the vertical wall)
Once you select those settings then close, you'll be able to change them to the values I've given in brackets.
Then SLICE away.
You should get something like this. Before modifier to end.







Above modifier back to normal.


I have not tested this but it looks right. Good luck. It's a bit of a longish procedure but will be DOABLE for any existing STL nosecone.

Norm

 

[OzHybrid]

Here is the Nosecone Lip Generator. It's a work in progress(today) Test objects included. So you can have a play in Cura or your own choice of slicer( not sure if the others have profile modifier blocks as an option.

 

[SolarYellow]

Updated the fin generator. Tip leading and trailing edges were wrong length and thickness. Fixed.
Added a section at the end so you could make the fin can a full motor mount. Done for Aspire but works for anything you want to use it for. Manual entry of sizes required at bottom part of programing section. Aspire below..... Aspire added to fin can as a preset.

Norm,

This fin can is awesome. I downloaded the V4 posted above in this thread and was able to set up a fin can for a Little John based on Peter Alway's nominally-dimensioned sketches and some scaling of photos to get the tapers of the fins. It slides over a 29mm MMT like the old Enerjet/Centuri fin cans, but then pilots inside the rear of the BT-55 with the OD of the fin can matching the OD of the BT-55. Looks exactly how I want it to look. Except... the fillets look similar to the fillets in the Aspire fin can in the image above. They are heavily faceted. I've played with the FilletShape variable with values from 1 to 0.1, and while there are some differences, nothing gives me anything like a radiused fillet. Screen cap below, with the FilletShape variable at 0.3. I exported the STL and opened it in Chitubox and it looked the same, still faceted.

Is this just a scenario where I'm going to have to print it faceted and do some sanding and possibly filling if I want a radius?

Thanks!

 

[kalsow]

For round fillets, try this one. It pushes on some OpenSCAD limts, so it can be a bit finicky.

https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/openscad-fin-can-generator.171408/post-2280384

 

[OzHybrid]

Norm,

This fin can is awesome. I downloaded the V4 posted above in this thread and was able to set up a fin can for a Little John based on Peter Alway's nominally-dimensioned sketches and some scaling of photos to get the tapers of the fins. It slides over a 29mm MMT like the old Enerjet/Centuri fin cans, but then pilots inside the rear of the BT-55 with the OD of the fin can matching the OD of the BT-55. Looks exactly how I want it to look. Except... the fillets look similar to the fillets in the Aspire fin can in the image above. They are heavily faceted. I've played with the FilletShape variable with values from 1 to 0.1, and while there are some differences, nothing gives me anything like a radiused fillet. Screen cap below, with the FilletShape variable at 0.3. I exported the STL and opened it in Chitubox and it looked the same, still faceted.

Is this just a scenario where I'm going to have to print it faceted and do some sanding and possibly filling if I want a radius?

Thanks!

View attachment 562614

The facets look bad in the modelling of scad. They don't look that bad once printed. That said, this is not a scale modelling tool. Doesn't do rivets.....
I'll take a photo of one I printed for a 4" tube. You decide. Don't forget the printer will tend to soften these facets too due to the nature of FDM not being able to print extremely sharp corners. Especially if you are printing with a 0.6 or my favourite 0.8 nozzle. So in my opinion, for what it's worth, this works well and produces real-world printed good quality fin cans.
Once you start going to full fillets, it introduces other issues that can cause scad to fail as you have found. The failure points in scad are due to where the interface contact points between meeting elements are. This can be tricky to make it work for a generic component creator like the fin can generator. It can work most of the time and fail for the one type of fin can you want to make. If that happens try Bills one or if Bills fails try mine. The 2 slightly different approaches we've taken will fail at different points. So one should work.

For example, if you take Bills BT60 Ho-Jo preset and change the base units to mm, it fails because the numbers are too small. So when you use the numerical dimensions of that preset to create a preset in mm, it's important to say if it's in mm or inches if that's selectable. BT60 Ho-Jo Inch or BT60 Ho-Jo mm are similar, but not the same thing. This was one reason I just made mine in mm. One less failure point. Bill writes much better code than me but still has blind spots @kalsow
When we both write these things, we get so involved with it that we can forget to document something that we know implicitly because we're into it, which might cause a failure for others when they use it.BT 60 fin can for Ho Jo Below