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Mold of a Wing

bjoern79de
Participant

Mold of a Wing

bjoern79de
Participant
Participant

I've tried reams of different approaches to get a mold (outer shell of a wing).

It should be a thin shell, because I want to 3D-print the molds and save a lot of material / time.

I'm using a python script to import the wing sections. It's possible to create a loft, but all approaches to get a outer shell of it, leads to an error.

 

Then I noticed a really strange behavior:

 

When I select a single sketch, I see the airfoil and the enclosed profile. When I try to create an outer offset line around the spline, it works for 2mm - but not for all values above 2.2mm.

For my understanding any outer offset of any closed (non-self intersecting) sketchCurve should be possible. Is this a Bug?

 

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davebYYPCU
Consultant
Consultant

If you work with top / bottom as individuals, Fusion behaves a bit better.

 

if you Loft as two surfaces, then Thicken should get you there, Trailing  Edge extensions will be amalgamated into the flange anyway.

 

Might help....

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bjoern79de
Participant
Participant

I also tried on halves, but the thicken feature only works with 1mm (which is too thin).

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davebYYPCU
Consultant
Consultant

Loft the outer profiles of the mold and Combine / Loft cut the wing from within it.

 

Might help....

 

 

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bjoern79de
Participant
Participant

I've tried that. But how to loft the outer profile, if I get an error when I try to create the outer profile by building an offset of the inner one.

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davebYYPCU
Consultant
Consultant

You mentioned Offset curve give unexpected results.  How did you tried that?

Create new curves.

 

Might help...

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bjoern79de
Participant
Participant

I don't want to do it by hand. There are hundreds of profile curves imported from the file.

When I change something in the external tool, I would have to draw hundreds of curves again by hand.

When I click on the curve in sketch mode, and select the offset feature I'm able to set a value of 2mm for example.

There's a outer profile correctly drawn around the original profile. But when I set 2.2mm, an error occurs.

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davebYYPCU
Consultant
Consultant

Sorry - all my comments have presumed you have somewhat a conventional wing with Fusion data, Fusion works really well with native curves, not so much with imported data.

You can’t outline the rib  with 4 point spline, top / bottom?  

 

Accuracy and 3d print - you could reconsider your approach.

 

Might help....

 

 

 

 

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bjoern79de
Participant
Participant

Hmm, I have a file which just contains coordinates. I "import" it over the Fusion360-API just create sketch elements like if I create them over the user interface. Just not by hand. I'd like to use my tool for designing my rc plane, then running my automated fusion script and then I want to start with all the details.

 

Then I want to refine flight characteristics iteratively by changing wing characteristics and re-run the automation script.

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davebYYPCU
Consultant
Consultant

Well that’s Fusion Data, not imported curves.  Your approach sounds fine.

What is it in the data points that breaks the offset, have you used the Curvature Comb on them?

@OceanHydroAU uses the API for his plugin, he may like to join in here.

 

Might help....

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bjoern79de
Participant
Participant

I've found the issue:

 

In the first step I've created a single 3D-sketch including all points and directly created the curves on them. Then I projected the curves onto the respective 2D-sketch to be able to address a single profile each sketch in my script (for the loft). No it works, when I project the associated points to each sketch and create the curves there.

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davebYYPCU
Consultant
Consultant

Ok, thanks for the update.

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OceanHydroAU
Collaborator
Collaborator

Getting the rails right fixes most problems.

 

I've had success duplicating my result, scaling it up, then using the original to cut out the inside from the scaled outside.

 

I also had success using the "Surface" environment (not the Model environment) which I later turned into a soild, but I expect you could turn it into a surface with a given thickness instead if you wanted.

 

If you're molding with expanding foam - beware that it exerts significant pressure - a thin skin mold is not going to work right I'd expect - long things like wings are quite floppy direct off a 3D printer.

 

I recommend my add-in for the foil shapes - I've done 8 years research on airfoils found around the internet - long story short - they are all garbage: vastly too many non-experts worshiping anecdotes have resulted in a flood of rubbish that is simply wrong.  NASA themselves literally have the last word - this is their final addendum to their NACA series:-

 

"Today, airfoil design has in many ways returned to an earlier time before the NACA families were
created. The computational resources available now allow the designer to quickly design and
optimize an airfoil specifically tailored to a particular application rather than making a selection from
an existing family. "

 

That's the verbose way of saying "Do not use any of our foil families".

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