By QuartZ
#4918385
twmedford23 wrote: May 22nd, 2019, 12:27 pm Masterful work!
Thank you for your kind words.
Kingpin wrote:This is some of the coolest shit I've ever seen this community produce. :)
Wow. I take that as a serious compliment, thank you!
TragicManner wrote:That is so clean and well-done that I teared up a little just seeing it coming together.
Absolutely incredible. Can't wait to see the continued progress.
Thanks, I'm trying to keep it accurate in form and fairly clean so that the printed nature of it will be hidden in the end. I'm also planning to add in some intentional slop/human error during the finishing phase that will give recover some of that handmade 80s prop feel.

It is really satisfying to get past the major assembly/sanding phase for the shell. Knowing that only smaller/simpler parts remain (not counting the thrower) is a bit of a relief.

-Dana
Mattb1Stantz liked this
By QuartZ
#4918466
Here are the fruits of my recent design/engineering efforts on the Ion Arm. I decided I wanted to print the arm in 3 pieces, a main hollow body (3mm thick walls) and a top and bottom plate featuring holes and integration for mounting hardware. I decided to put a different type of 'nut trap' in these plates that will hold a hex nuts (1/4-20 for the bottom and 10-32 for the top). The nuts will be press fit into the plates and aligned with the holes, then the plates will be glued to the main body joining everything together. Here's the exploded view:

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The top/bottom plates already came off the printer. You can see the slots that the hex nuts slide into :

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The other side (you get a better sense of how the nut trap slots align with the holes that the screws pass through:

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I'll post another update once the main body part is off the printer. It's an 8 hour part.

-Dana
By QuartZ
#4918646
Hey gang!

So, I'm working on the rest of the parts that attach to the shell and I figured out how I want to create my Beam Line and Filler Tube. I could have 3D printed them as a solid parts but I don't really want to sand cylindrical tube elements if I don't have to. Aluminum IS heavier than the PLA plastic for the tube sections of these parts, but I think the time I save in printing the tubes and the time I would save not having to sand and fill the tubes to get them smooth is the right move. With that in mind, I designed them to have a base piece and a lid piece that is printed. These will include internal hex nuts (using nut traps designed into the parts) for mounting to the shell, and an NPT nut for the Clippard fitting on the Beam Line.

Here are the parts that get assembled:
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And here's what they look like dry-fit together:
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And here's a quick update shot of the pack with the most recent parts added. I used 1/4-20 hardware to mount everything.
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I plan to use Aves Apoxie Sculpt to make my welds on each. But I'll get to that when I'm in my detailing phase for all of the parts. Now that I've figured out this design, I'm going to apply it to the other similar tube-based parts.

-Dana
twmedford23 liked this
By QuartZ
#4918740
Back to share more progress...

I got the booster frame printed. I included a masonite-like pattern on the inner bars:
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I finished the HGA lid and mount design, and got those printed:
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The little dowel/peg gets glued into the bracket bar. I have a corresponding indexing hole in my shell design to help me get the orientation right once the holes for the Legris elbow and Clippard fitting are drilled and tapped. Again, overkill:
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This lid piece ended up fitting a little loose in the aluminum tube. So I adjusted a diameter on the inner shoulder and reprinted it (not pictured here). What you can see is that I decided to design the part with the 1/4-20 threads for the screws built right in. Since the screws are cosmetic and don't bear any load other than their own weight, I figured the plastic threads will do:
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Here's a photo showing how the HGA bracket and peg match the shell. Hopefully that makes sense seeing them lined up like this:
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I also printed parts and glued up the assemblies for the Injectors and Vacuum Tube. I didn't take photos as they pretty much matched what I posted for the Beam Line and Filler Tube parts (basically). However I did snap some shots this morning of the pack with all of these parts test fit and mounted. It's really taking shape now!
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I'm going to work on the PPD and Booster Tube next.

-Dana
By QuartZ
#4919069
Hi Gang!

Yesterday I started in on the Booster Tube. I didn't mention it in my earlier post about aluminum tubes, but I've chosen to go with all of the recommended tube dimensions in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=25357 I haven't had the best luck with the online vendor speedymetals in the past, so I go with onlinemetals (.com) in case others are looking for alternative sources.

Moving on, in order to cut my 2.5" OD tube at the right angle for my shell, I designed a simple little helper tool that slides over the aluminum and gives me the correct angle to mark and cut. I printed it out, marked the overall length of the tube to find the end of the angled cut, taped the helper to the tube and then traced a line onto the aluminum with a pen. Here's a photo of the helper print:

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I used a hacksaw and a vise to make the cut. It came out pretty clean. I drilled the mounting holes and used 1/4-20 screws and nuts to mount it. There's a bit of a gap between the shell and the angled cut here and there, but overall the fit is good enough. I plan to create the weld detail where they meet anyway, so any gap will be hidden later.

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As you can see above, I also marked, drilled and tapped the 10-32 holes in the Booster Tube so that I could get the Booster Frame attached. This was pretty easy. Back to deciding/working out how I want to mount my PPD so I can get that on next.

-Dana
twmedford23, Kingpin liked this
By QuartZ
#4919311
I am working on the PPD :), but got excited about printing my Shock Mount/Bellows so I went for it. I'm really happy with what I came up with to get this to print cleanly and incorporate a mounting solution to the 1/4-20 screw coming through the bumper. Here's my print bed with all of the pieces:

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There are a few interesting pieces in there. There's a unique top and bottom piece (hard to tell), and a pair of discs in the upper right that allow me to trap a 1/4-20 hex nut inside the assembly. Also there's a little helper tool that lets me center the top piece via the small hole.

I use a 1/4-20 bolt to help align all of the parts on center (I will be gluing them all together once I give them a quick sanding/filler primer). The hex nut is contained in 2 layers as seen here:

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Then the rest of the parts are stacked and glued on top of that. Once all parts are glued, I can simply unthread the 1/4-20 screw used to align the pieces and "tada" you have a 1-piece Shock Mount with strong metal threads trapped inside. ;)

Image

-Dana
Kingpin, TragicManner, twmedford23 and 2 others liked this
By Scuba Steve
#4919727
I borrowed a 3D printer for the summer from the Elementary School where I work and have just started playing around with it. I'd have a blast playing aroudn with this build if/when you ever release/sell a complete set of plans for this pack.
By QuartZ
#4920065
TragicManner wrote: June 12th, 2019, 2:01 pm That looks great! I love the designs where the "disks" are printed our separately and then joined together somehow. Makes the print so much cleaner.
Thanks, I have been trying to design clean printing parts whenever I can (and whenever it really counts). This one worked out great although I do admit it looks kinda nuts to assemble that many individual pieces to complete what most replicas achieve with 1 solid part.
twmedford23 wrote:Would love to buy a printed bellows if you ever decide to sell! It looks fantastic!
I appreciate the interest and will keep you in mind. I don't want to cause any problems here by discussing it further without being a "Supporting Member" yet...
Scuba Steve wrote:I borrowed a 3D printer for the summer from the Elementary School where I work and have just started playing around with it. I'd have a blast playing around with this build if/when you ever release/sell a complete set of plans for this pack.
Thanks for your feedback and support as well. As I mentioned to twmedford23 I'll keep this all in mind for the future! ;)

-Dana
By QuartZ
#4920067
OK, I have to admit that I paused working on my PPD, I got sidetracked working on a project related to my proton pack for my girlfriend. Without saying any more, I hope to be able to reveal that soon in another thread. I'll absolutely post a link here for all of you who have been following along so at least you can see why I've been slow over the past few weeks.

But, I did purchase some potentiometers. They are 10K Ohm versions, the knurled knob is 1/4" in diameter and should be decent for mounting a Raytheon crank.
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While my pack shell has a 1/4" (or more accurately a 6.4mm) hole designed into it for such an item, I ended up using a 5/16" drill bit to enlarge the hole a bit so the threads on the potentiometer would clear easily. On the inside of the shell, I used a soldering iron to melt a little indentation for the small metal tab on the pot that acts as a locking mechanism to keep the it from rotating when installed. Sorry I didn't take a photo of that. Anyway, here's how it all came together.
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Not a super exciting update, I know. But I thought I'd post any progress regardless of how small. I will try get more done soon!

-Dana
By QuartZ
#4920408
Happy 4th of July to everyone here in the US!

OK, I banged out the PPD this morning. I designed my parts in Fusion 360 so that they could both be 3D printed, or as I have chosen a hybrid of a 3D printed inner core inserted into the recommended aluminum tube. Here's are the parts as they exist in my Fusion project:
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And here are the real-world parts. On top is the printed core (sanded so that it fit easily into the aluminum tube) and below is a section of aluminum tube that I cut to match the length and angle of my core. To do that, I just stood the two parts next to each other on a flat surface, and marked the aluminum tube with a pen at the same angle as the printed part. Then I cut it with a hacksaw and sanded the edges to remove any burrs.
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Here is the core inserted into the tube. the angle isn't perfect, but good enough for me:
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The 3D printed core has 1/4-20 threads designed into it, so in order to make this "mountable" to the shell, I just had to drill 2 clearance holes in the aluminum tube. But I have my holes located at a 30 degree angle off of the vertical centerline when looking down the PPD. So positioning these holes accurately on the outer aluminum tube wasn't so simple.

TLDR - I hacked my way to marking and drilling holes in the aluminum tube that aligned with the 3D printed core holes.

If you're at all interested... here's what I did. I started by aligning the two parts and making some registration marks with a pen on both so that I could always verify their alignment (still visible in the photo below). Then I slid the core out the back of the aluminum tube while eyeballing the registration marks and keeping them aligned (close enough). Once the first screw hole emerged out the back of the tube, I marked the centerline of it on the edge of the aluminum tube with a pen. That showed me where 30 degrees off center was on the aluminum tube. Then I drew a perpendicular line from this mark up the length of the tube. Finally, I separated the parts and stood them up on end next to each other again so that I could transfer some horizontal marks from the holes in the core to the aluminum tube. Now I knew where to drill the 5/16" diameter clearance holes. Whew, I'm sure there's a better, easier, or more accurate way to do that, but I chose this method to get it done.

Here's the parts dry-fit together with hardware installed:
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And finally here's a shot of the PPD mounted to the pack:
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I plan to glue the printed core into the aluminum tube to permanently combine them. Then I'll do some final cleanup and sanding to improve the end-cut "grain" to look more like the screen used PPDs. But I'm happy with how this turned out. Moving on!

-Dana
By QuartZ
#4920445
I've had my P-Clamp for a few weeks but decided to mount it to the pack today and test the fit. I'm glad I did as I found that the black rubber insulation was interfering with the clamp closing properly. It made the holes in the metal clamp band offset from each other. So, I trimmed a little bit off the end (less than 1/4") and everything worked out nicely.

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-Dana
By QuartZ
#4920476
CPU64 wrote: July 5th, 2019, 1:36 pm Evryting you're doin is awesome, jus vanted yu to no dat!
-yanosh-
Hahaha!! Thanks for that. I just watched GB2 yesterday and that accent still cracks me up.

-Dana
By QuartZ
#4920481
I printed out the Ion Arm Cap. It's has holes for the brass rods, recessed clearance holes for 10-32 x 1/2" socket head screws, and a threaded hole designed into it for the Clippard fitting:
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I bought a set of resistors so that I could take measurements to make some accurate 3D models for printing:
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I did create a set of these in Fusion 360. I plan on printing them, I'm not sure what set I'll use on the pack in the end. I'd like to save more weight by going with printed plastic parts, we'll see. These still need some polish to get them finished, but all of the basic measurements are good:
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And here are some shots of the above parts mounted. I used 4-40 socket head screws for the resistors. The threads were designed and printed into the Ion Arm:
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-Dana
RedSpecial liked this
By QuartZ
#4920485
I realized I hadn't posted a full progress shot in a while. So here's where I am with everything that's on the pack so far:
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I still have to sand and fill the following parts - Bumper, Shock Mount, N-Filter, Booster Frame, Ion Arm & Cap
I plan to work on the Injector Bracket and Ribbon Cable Clamps next.

-Dana
User avatar
By RedSpecial
#4920494
Nope, all wrong!
You'd better just send it to me for proper disposal and start again ;)

All joking aside though, that's amazing.
Cant wait to see how it looks once its all painted.

Any idea what the final weight will be?
By QuartZ
#4920548
RedSpecial wrote: July 6th, 2019, 3:59 pm Nope, all wrong!
You'd better just send it to me for proper disposal and start again ;)
Damn! Will there be a substantial fee for disposal??
RedSpecial wrote: July 6th, 2019, 3:59 pm All joking aside though, that's amazing.
Cant wait to see how it looks once its all painted.

Any idea what the final weight will be?
Thank you. I'm not sure, but my goal is to try and keep it as light as possible. I did mention in an earlier post that one trade off I chose was to use aluminum tubes for some parts to save on print time and sanding. Each aluminum piece weighs nearly double what the 3D printed part would weigh! So, I may regret that choice later, but I can alway re-do those with printed parts since they are attached with screws to the shell.

I took the pack as seen in my most recent progress photos, and put it on the scale...
Weight of everything so far is 3,008g. (6.63 lbs.)

-Dana
By QuartZ
#4920585
LtPinkerton wrote: July 7th, 2019, 9:05 am Wow, looks amazing. 3D printing a pack is one of the main reasons I bought a cr-10.

Any chance you’re gonna be selling your files? They’re really top notch.
Thank you for the support! 3D printing is pretty sweet, but there's plenty of hard work needed to finish the parts.

As far as your question is concerned, I want to get through my personal pack assembly to validate my design/work for the whole thing before I send anyone else down the same path. I've already caught a few minor issues and made note of some MKII improvements that would make a few areas easier to assemble and even a bit more accurate.

-Dana
By QuartZ
#4920587
Ok, so I scratch built my Ribbon Cable Clamps today.

I started by 3D printing one of my clamp parts to use as a template. Then I took some 1/8" thick aluminum flat bar stock and used some red Sharpie marker as "poor-man's Dykem", coloring a stripe across the bar and scoring it with an x-acto knife to transfer the overall width of the clamp to it. I used a hacksaw to cut the first piece. Then I marked the hole locations and traced the curve with a pen. I used a drill press to drill the holes. I forgot to take pictures of all of this, but here's the result:
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I laid down another red Sharpie stripe on the next bit of flat bar, clamped it to first part and proceeded to use it as a template to drill holes into the new uncut bar. From this point on, I would use the 8-32 screws and nuts as a way to keep the two clamp parts aligned and locked to each other:
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Again, I grabbed my hacksaw and cut the second piece of aluminum to length:
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Now I could use that pen-traced curve as a reference to do some more drill press work. A 1/8" bit made quick but repetitive work out of perforating both pieces at once. This will save me some time removing material later (not perfect, but good enough to get the rough cut done next) :
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Then I played connect the dots with a Dremel and a cut-off wheel (the good kind). It wasn't easy, but I have a ton of Dremel experience and don't mind calling myself an expert Hehe! No seriously.
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Keeping everything locked together, I started refining the curve with a super coarse sanding drum in the Dremel. Below I stopped when I felt I was getting close to the pen line, and wanted to use my red Sharpie Dykem trick again to get a better idea of where the final curve edge needed to be. So I mounted the 3D printed template again and scored the metal. Now the goal is clear:
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Ok, so after some more grinding and a few test fits on the shell, I was able to fine tune the curve and wrap it up. I took some sandpaper to all the edges just to knock down anything sharp and scuffed up all the surfaces with a Scotch-Brite scouring pad to restore the brushed finish (moving in a linear direction).Image
And last but not least, here are both clamp parts mounted to the shell with the hardware:
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Ok, so that's out of the way. Gotta get that Injector Bracket done next

-Dana
By QuartZ
#4921190
Oh boy it's been too long since I've been able to get some work done on the pack. I woke up this morning and had enough time to finish my Injector Bracket. Yay! So here's how I got it done.

I ordered some Aluminum angle from OnlineMetals, I chose 2" x 3" @ 1/8" thick. Based on my 3D design, it was the closest size and I knew I could cut it down to match the 3D part. I had them cut me a few at 1 1/4" wide just in case I messed up. Here's what one looks like as delivered:
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I cut down the short leg that mounts to the Shell first, then I measured and marked the 2 holes I would drill and tap for 10-32 screws that mount from the inside of the Shell. I test fit the bracket once these could be fastened:
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That looked like it lined up well and sat flush against the sides of the Injectors. So my next move was to measure and drill holes for the two screws that I'm using to mount the longer leg of the Bracket to the Injectors. Again, I used my 3D file to get the dimensions needed and went about marking the holes. I didn't need to tap these since the screws pass through and thread into the Injectors: I also cut the longer leg down since 3" was 1/4" longer than needed. I softened the corners with my Dremel, chamfered all the edges with a metal file, and gave it a quick scuff/brushed metal pass with some ScotchBrite. My final bracket below:
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I mounted the bracket to the Shell again and used these 2 new holes to mark the final holes that needed to be drilled into the Injector tubes themselves. I used a pen to trace the inside of the bracket holes. Then I removed the Injectors, drilled them on the drill press, tapped, and re-installed them to the Shell and completed the installation of all hardware. Here's what it looks like all wrapped up:
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-Dana
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