I now know why we call it Labour Day weekend

I got to work fairly early on Saturday, finishing up the 3D modelling for Louie's plane. I decided that I hated Louie's hands on the CAD model. You can see the difference in the below image. The original model is on the right.

 They are totally fine for a 2" toy, but we are going to be making this thing with a 36" wingspan, and the original hands just wouldn't cut it. It didn't take me very long to whip up a hand and a sleeve cuff. I knew that I would be making the bulk of this job from 2" HDU, and the hand ended up being 2.180" at the widest part, so I squished it a little so it would fit in the material block. I really don't think anyone will even notice. I will be double-sided machining this part to keep it all one piece.

I then Booleaned the plane fuselage and the hand. This just means that I removed the geometry from the hands with the shape of the plane fuselage. As our Hexagon software doesn't have collision detection, one model can pass right through another model. When the part is finally machined, the hand will sit perfectly on the fuselage curve.

I was also able to get the head sectioned apart for machining.  I will section the face into layers in Aspire, as opposed to doing it in Hexagon. Moving between different software allows me to utilize the most powerful features of each one, significantly speeding up my workflow.

Sunday I had to drop Louie and move onto the Bakugan display table. I had finished the last of the vector work on Saturday, so I spent about 20 min in the morning nesting and toolpathing all the parts in Aspire.

Our Techno cnc flew through the pocketing and profiling of all the parts. It took on average 5min for each 4X8 sheet. Pretty quick I think. It actually takes longer to clear all the parts off the table and load another sheet than to actually cut.

In about 25 min. I had all the parts that the router was cutting ready to assemble.

This is where I ended on Sunday night. It's starting to look pretty cool now. All of the curved sheets are 3/8" wiggle wood. I just need to cut the 4" strips that will make up the table top thickness and add them to the slabs that the Techno cnc cut, as well as the slab base plate. This display table will get a heavy texture that we will do on Monday. I have a meeting on Tuesday in the morning, then I can get the silver base coat on this piece. We are going to use an enamel silver for durability so the dry time is a little painfull. I was hoping to have the texture done today, but I had to do a few drawings for the Fiberglass shop we work with regarding an old project, so that kind of set me back a bit today.

8)
JO

Let the modelling begin!

We delivered the columns and header today. I had to cut a few pieces of acrylic that would become the edge to the simple table we made. These edges stick up around 3" to prevent the motorized robot toys from committing suicide on to the floor. We wrapped the stuff up, and put it in the van and away we went. We got back to the shop around 3 and I got right to work on the Louie model. I had spent a little time last night working on the plane, but it quickly occurred to me that it would be best just to model the plane from scratch. The reason for this was that there was a baffling amount of geometry in the imported CAD file. When I exported the file out as an OBJ surface model, it looked good, but there was 2 surfaces for each inside and outside surface on the model. This meant to modify anything, I had 4 surfaces to deal with, and each surface was so close to the other ones, it took forever just to remove small sections. The other reason was that after I had detached the parts I wanted off, the model had so many holes in it, it looked like it had been thrown in a blender for a while. Even if I had persevered, I still had to deal with the pocket holes for the screws, etc. It would be way faster to start again. Just the plane though, I will change very little on Louie himself. I was able to take the CAD file, remove Louie and model the plane to a 2D outline image for the front/top/left and back view. With this outline image, I opened our other 3D software package, brought in the 2D images, and set them up as modelling blueprints. This gave me an un-distorted plan view from which to start modelling from.

It looks a little weird at this point, but the three views I'm interested in all line up perfectly.

I started with the nose cone of the plane, creating a cylinder and adjusting it to the image in all 3 of the views.

I then just started a new cylinder, and followed the contours of the plane images.

It doesn't show in the screen grab, but I actually have 3 simultaneous windows open, showing me the different views I need all at once. This allows me to tweak a portion and see it update in all the windows. When the fuselage was finished, I started on the wings. I used the blueprint as a size guide only.

Because our model will be HUGE compared to the toy, I felt that the small little wings lacked any sort of resemblance to a plane. I added some ribbing to the model to give it a stretched canvas kind of look.

Next was the rudder and tail fins. I didn't do much different than the drawing on these parts, except to shape the profile a little more like a wing shape.

Finally I closed off the nose cone with the recess like the toy has. On the toy, the engine parts are printed on a sticker and stuck in there, We will model a very simple rotary engine with a clear disk representing the 'spinning' propeller.

Here is the finished plane with the imported Louie model set in place. You can see all the dark grey lines on the plane and Louie, this is the wire cage for the model. By re-modelling the plane, you can see I have cut the geometry down by at least 90%. This will make it VERY easy to section the plane up for import into Aspire. for machining.

8)

JO

Display table

For starters, I am stumped at the number of people who have been asking me about Loopin Louie. Mainly 'What is it?' It was a childhood game, it was around at the same time as Hungry Hippo's, and Buckaroo.
I thought I would embed a Youtube link I found to his commercial from around '93.





On another note, I started designing all the vectors for the cool display table we are starting right away. This is another job I'm glad to be working on. Some jobs are not all that exciting, but Louie and the display are gonna be a lot of fun.

These vectors I am drawing in Corel Draw.  They certainly could be drawn in Aspire, but I am a little stuck in my ways, and find technical things easier for me to draw this way. I will eventually switch all of it over to Aspire, but for now, I like my way :) The original design didn't come from me, but redrawing all the pieces will smooth out the 'faceted' style drawing of Sketchup file. The whole thing will be 2D laminations of various thickness MDF. Most of it is straight forward, but there is some curved sections in the middle that we will make from 1/8" MDF and it will be set into rabbets in the end panels. I can hardly wait to start our Techno cnc cutting into the material, and all the pieces aligning properly.

8)
JO