Eagle Ray is an open source project of Kashmir World Foundation designing an aircraft for protecting endangered species. We have a lot of conformal hatch covers to design, hatch openings to create, and ledges to add for attaching the hatch covers. We need hatches for servos, avionics bays, and payload bays
K-power DMC811 Servo.3dm (3.4 MB)
ER_4-0_HalfScale__current_.3dm (8.3 MB)
. I would much appreciate your suggestions for the best approach. I am attaching a current CAD for Eagle Ray and an example servo frame with 2d projection of a servo cover. Four of these servos need to be installed in Eagle Ray. Servo covers are normally 1.5mm thick, placed on the underside of the wing or inside the wingtips, with a 4mm lip under around the edge to contain the threaded inserts for attaching the servo covers.
Hi Ron, so the goal is to get this rectangular shape let into the 3d curved surfaces, correct ? Some view, possibly a plan view has this shape but it is actually cut into the curved surface…?
Like so, but with fasteners?
-Pascal
Hi Pascal,
That sounds about right. The servo frame included in the file I attached ends up part of the internal structure of the wing, and the servo cover is attached to the servo frame using four M2.5 flat head screws such that it is conformal and flush with the wing. In my file the servo cover is flat, so the trick is how to cut the opening in the wing and then use the cut piece as the servo cover.
Thanks,
Ron
Hi Ron - the basic process would be to get the outer curve of the cover, make a small offset (Offset command) for clearance and then project the curves onto the target surface. Split the surface wil the curves and OffsetSrf or ExtrudeSrf (With Solid=Yes) - most likely extrude, I would think in this case - making sure the extrusion direction matches the projection direction… Then add the details - the screw locations can be projected from the flat version as well as tyhe outer curves.
-Pascal
I could use a little more guidance on how to create the lip under the hatch. The lip should be 2mm all around and 1.5mm thick. I included notes in my CAD file so you could see if I have a good process making the hatches before making the lips.
Lucas Cover Test.3dm (607.7 KB)
Hi Ronald - is this what you need -
?
-Pascal
Hi Pascal,
That looks like what I need. What magic did you do to get there?
@ronald1 I’m not Pascal but this is how I would approach it. Technically it is not going to be an exact offset of 1.5mm this way. If that’s a requirement, you could use the offsets on surface to extrude and intersect them with the solid offset of the inner sphere surface (copy)
HI Gijs,
Thanks for the short video tutorial. We have many hatches to make, and now we can make them correctly.
I do have one final question. At 54 seconds in the video you extrude the lip surface and then move the lip solid. You seem to do this without executing a command – just some mouse strokes. How did you bring up that handy coordinate system and then how did you perform the extrude and move functions?
V/r,
Ron
CTO Kashmir Robotics
if you click once on the small solid circle on the gumball it pops up a textbox where you can enter the extrusion distance:
Hi Gijs … My question is associated with 1 second before the gumball. How did you make the gumball appear? I noticed you selected a surface and the gumball popped up. When I do the same, there is no gumball.
make sure it is activated in the statusbar
Hi Pascal and Gijs … With your assistance we now have a tutorial and example of how to create hatches … This will be extremely useful for a our interns as they set to work making all the necessary hatches … One remaining question is how to make the 6mm diameter pillars and recesses for the M2 flat head fasteners such that they are orthogonal to a point in the center of the circles as projected on the hatch. This will enable the flat head screws to be flush with the surface.
Lucas Cover Test.3dm (7.0 MB)
Hi Ronald - I can’t quite tell - do you want the screws normal to the tach surface or vertical - I suspect normal…
Project the point, then use Line > Normal on that target surface, snapping to the point - then, I think, you have what you need to construct that - though what the design should look like there to accommodate the screw is not that clear to me. Either way you’ll need to attach some material in there I guess.
-Pascal
We are working on hatches again and trying to provide students with a standard approach. I created the attached file with Step by Step Tutorial on how to create hatches, support structures, and fasteners.
Hatch Tutorial.3dm (4.0 MB)