The venerable Bentley Blower in 1/12th

[minitnkr]

Science fiction not many years ago. Astounding result.

 

[nickedw]

This is looking more like one of my build plates now

Nick

 

[tr1ckey66]

Hi Nick
Just caught up with this. Absolutely marvelous stuff.
Keep up the great work
Cheers
paul

 

[Neil Merryweather]

If that big curved mesh survives I will be WELL impressed, Nick!

 

[Gern]

Looks like Percy Verance has struck again! Marvellous stuff Nick!

 

[nickedw]

If that big curved mesh survives I will be WELL impressed, Nick!

Its testing my faith in physics, it's perfectly vertical so the only stress on it during printing is directly upward and its a tiny surface area. It's only your brain telling you its a big curved sheet of stuff - it isn't

Youre probably right though after all that We'll know about tea time.

 

[Ian M]

FFFFffff.....lipping 'eck!
That is gorgeous!

 

[nickedw]

So needless to say after my over confidence the mesh of course failed to print I brought that on my myself! I’ve gone this far, so I will find a way of doing this. The rest? OK I think.

Nick

 

[Airborne01]

That is superb!
Steve

 

[nickedw]

It was easy in the end.

Ish.

This was always going to be too fine to use slicer-generated supports so I ended up designing and drawing these in fusion 360.

Version 1 failed because of the horizontal wires. Every time you get to the centre of one, that’s a relatively large surface putting a high load on the much smaller vertical cross section wires preceding it and eventually it just pulls free and fails.

I also overlooked the cut out for the differential so this needed it’s own supports too

I seem to have this Victorian iron works/steampunk thing going on here for some reason?

Anyway, it worked, you can also see the baggyness I was talking about earlier, this goes away as it dries/cures

Nick

 

[Tim Marlow]

Great bit of lateral thinking there…..interesting about the pseudo Nora Batty look as well.

 

[Neil Merryweather]

Ingenious! Great problem solving, great result, love it!
What size is the mesh and how thin is the 'wire'?

 

[Scratchbuilder]

WELL Guys thinkin this through i aggree with Steve an i'll proberly get shot for this from you guys esp the guys who have bad aritise in their hands but yes this cad thing is great but here we go i dont think its modeling as such as the machine is doin all the building an not the moddeler like i like to scratchbuild the part that i need an not just let the machine do it Aaaaaaccchhh there ive said it now so all feel free to have your say

Fully agree, I am old school with scratchbuilding etc. But sometimes I look towards this new technology and wish I had the experience to use it and save me time. And to be honest I still keep looking, and still keep control of my credit card because I know once off the leash I would be gone....

 

[Scratchbuilder]

If anyone would like to see it (after all that! ), here is the CAD drawing I'm still working on for the Bentley Engine :- Bentley Blower CAD

Had a look and play with the scroll/rotate. I see you use Fusion, do you reccomend it for beginners - because that is where most of us are at the moment, we look, but the tech puts us off. I tried Gimp, got the book, downloaded the program and watched the videos, but still fell flat. And I should know better after using Flash MX etc during my Graphic Design degree course.

 

[boatman]

Fully agree, I am old school with scratchbuilding etc. But sometimes I look towards this new technology and wish I had the experience to use it and save me time. And to be honest I still keep looking, and still keep control of my credit card because I know once off the leash I would be gone....

YES I ALSO fully aggree Mike an wish i could understand this cad but its way over my head an yes the card would be seriouly hit with the cost of buyin one of these an Nick is this cad stuff very heavy at all or about the same as 1mm plasticard thickness wheight ?
chrisb

 

[Scratchbuilder]

Nick,
Despite all the comments I must say that I am really impressed with all of your work and you have probably given a few of us a little nudge further into the future. We say we lose our mojo at certain points during our builds (I am in that mode now) And we could possibly be doing something other than sitting looking at the bench, and possibly working on a 'new' design for a part or a weapon could enhance our build in going forward without taking away the scratchbuild part of our life.
Again well done and look forward to more.
Mike.

 

[Neil Merryweather]

Nick,
Despite all the comments I must say that I am really impressed with all of your work and you have probably given a few of us a little nudge further into the future. We say we lose our mojo at certain points during our builds (I am in that mode now) And we could possibly be doing something other than sitting looking at the bench, and possibly working on a 'new' design for a part or a weapon could enhance our build in going forward without taking away the scratchbuild part of our life.
Again well done and look forward to more.
Mike.

I think I have said elsewhere that I find creating digital models just as satisfying as creating physical ones, with the added bonus that I can reproduce them to my heart's content and in different scales to boot! it's just a bugger learning the software on the way!

 

[nickedw]

Heres some rough shots of the first prototype. I'm pretty confident I can make this work now.

 

[tr1ckey66]

Awesome result Nick. Your perseverance has certainly paid off massively.
Great work
Paul

 

[nickedw]

Had a look and play with the scroll/rotate. I see you use Fusion, do you reccomend it for beginners - because that is where most of us are at the moment, we look, but the tech puts us off. I tried Gimp, got the book, downloaded the program and watched the videos, but still fell flat. And I should know better after using Flash MX etc during my Graphic Design degree course.

Yes I'm sold on fusion now, the more I use it, the more I like it. I recomend Lynda or Linked in Learning as its now called. It does have a cost, but its money well spent IMHO. You're probably only talking about 40 quid or so, one free month, one paid month if you focus, and you wont be far off.

The problem that re-occurs is this. Many years ago when I didn't know photoshop, I bought all the books and did all the courses and learnt about all these great features, but the problem was, I didn't really know what they were for, when to use what and the problems they solved. Everyone understands pictures hence my analogy.

CAD is the same (or worse actually) you try and learn a package, like fusion or gimp, and actually you probably don't know yet what you want to do with it. So you're actually learning the software AND CAD at the same time.
If you use structured training like Lynda, they know this (especially with their essentials series) and teach both hand in hand, by actually teaching you to draw a full object.

If you sit down with an avionics manual you can learn what everything does and how to operate every feature. Does this mean you can fly an airliner? it might do, but I wouldn't want to be aboard when you tried it.