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Creation of the replacement brace

A project log for RC Swampboat Repair

Broken/missing parts printed - make 'er seaworthy agin.

kendoken.do 02/05/2018 at 02:240 Comments

In order to build a replacement brace for this bad boy, I needed some measurements.

The hypotenuse of the triangle made by the drop between the vane tops and the motor mount arch was the first angle to consider. Rather than using math, I made a coarse model in Sketchup modelling the vane height from the deck, the distance from the vane root to directly below the attachment point on the motor mount arch and the height of motor mount arch attachment point from the deck.

Copy that, put it the appropriate distance away from the original and you have your basic framework upon which to design your replacement brace.

I took a .bmp of a skull I had made many years ago and extruded a 3d model to throw on the bracing just for fun.

Some of my angles were just a tad off. I gently heated the printed brace and bent the existing angles to perfection (heh). Screwed it down, slapped on the new EQ and blew away... well everything. First run blew all the papers and loose tools off my workbench.

The worst thing about this fix and upgrade was finding a large enough body of water to get it up to full speed!! If I added ailerons, this would literally fly.

This was fun enough to try to build my own from scratch, entirely 3d printed.

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