Very helpful. That there were variances on the original posed no problem back in the day for the builder of the kit, because all the ribs would be stacked, pinned and sanded to uniformity. The builder of your laser cut ribs will not have to do this stacking and sanding, of course.
So cool, for some reason i find it frustrating that you did not pop out any of the parts 😄 I hope you show some of the build and the finished product. Very cool 👍
Our balsa versions didn't have profiled wings. We rounded off the corners with a piece of sandpaper and called it good. That was in the 60's, if I was building one today I'd make it out of a piece of that paper covered craft and sign board you can buy at a Dollar Store. A piece of yarn glued to the wing's leading edge could be wrapped with a piece of clear package tape to form a smooth shape. The fuselage could be a sandwich of two thicknesses of the same sign board glued together to increase thickness. I bet it would be even lighter than a balsa version. A motor mount could be made out of a plastic bottle lid that has a diameter slightly bigger than a Baby Bee .049 engine. 4 tiny wood screws are enough to secure the motor to the plastic bottle cap. Larger pill bottle caps are about the right size.
Close. Born in California. Raised in Alabama. 10 years in the Navy all across the nation (but not PA). Five more in South Carolina. And 26 in Oregon at the time of this video. But, sooooo close.
Wow! I was close by a long shot, ha! For some reason you just sounded like a PA native. I'm from there but now 30 yrs in AZ. Mark, you got me going I've already graduated Pt. 1 and lookin' for Pt. 2. It's great to be able to make balsa models again but with the high tech tools. Thanks for your videos and for the reply!
That cuts so nice , my new maker 3 isn’t cutting balsa right. I’m getting an issue where it tears the 1/16 balsa going cross grain. With grain is fine. 1) are you using an original Cricut brand knife blade? 2) what pressure settings and number of passes?
I've found that if the balsa is somewhat dry it tears the wood. Dry, seasoned wood is good for building models if you're cutting by hand, but not for a Maker machine. Also, I think I only get about four or five balsa models out of a knife blade before it's time to get a new blade. But my models tend to have a lot of small parts and take a good bit of time to cut out. Balsa isn't very forgiving. Maybe retire those blades to bass wood cutting. So, 1) it is a Cricut brand blade. I do not know of any aftermarket blades that are made for the geared knife blade assembly. 2) I just use the Balsa setting in the Design Space program.
Unfortunately not. Fox has shifted from modelling products to exclusively industrial contracting. But there are thousands of them on eBay, RCGroups Classifieds, local clubs, etc.
Once I had all the individual parts drawn I arranged them into the two groups, then I used the cursor to to select each individual group of parts. I used the "Object" tab and selected "Group" to make the group of parts into one panel.
Thank you so much for this very well done set of instructions. I am 62 years old and as a kid from about 11 to 16 I made around a hundred balsa and tissue planes. control line, rubber band and gliders. I just bought an xtool laser cutting machine and thought I could visit my youth in an advanced way. I found here are few hobby stores selling kits and supplies for this hobby any more. Balsa glue and tissue dope, don't seem available any more. (for safety, I guess) So thank you so much. Now I just have to find a way to get tissue and figure out what replaces the tissue dope. If you know any web sites, it would be appreciated.
That's a more than perfect perfect perfect application for the xtool laser engraver/cutter ! I think GOD inspired the creation of these laser cutters for all of us MODEL AIRPLANE BUILDERS!
It would be great to see your process for popping out these pieces and cleaning them up, after cutting them on the cricut. Maybe also some notes on how often you have to replace the blade and other related maintenance tips you may have.
I have more problems with the parts not falling out of the sheet before I'm ready than trying to get them to pop out. The cutter truly cuts out each individual part. I usually put a strip of blue painter's tape over the parts to keep it all together while handling the cut sheet. I don't need to clean up the parts. They are virtually perfect when they come out of the machine. I change the blades when they stop cutting cleanly. I do not have and set schedule for replacing the blade. I don't really have any maintenance tips. The only thing that needs attention is cleaning he mats of balsa fiber, and I usually clean up the fibers with the weeding tool.
Thank for putting this together. I've been considering a Cricut for myself. How often do you change the blade in the machine? And how would it do with really light "C" grain balsa? And can you cut balsa thinner than 1/16th? Sorry for all the questions but your videos have me excited about the possibilities. 😁
I replace it when the blade stops cutting cleanly. I don't have any specific number of cuts or time period. I've cut extremely light balsa, just stopping the cut after two passes instead of doing the four that the program defaults to. I'm sure you could cut thinner, just with one or two passes. The thinner balsa would be more sensitive to blade condition.
I love this video because, although it may not be up to my usual level of intellectual guilt (intellectual innocence is a euphemism for stupid), you have a healthy dose of concern for the viewer. Don't worry about the length or whether it is boring to some one. It is not boring at all because you are stimulating intuitions which I had thought dead and buried, a long time ago! Thank you.
I had the same issue with scaling from Inkscape to DS. What I found was that if you ensure the svg only incldues paths (select all-paths-object to paths) the scaling is maintained. The 1" square is a great double check
Hi mate, what program do you use for the pdf component at the start of your video? Where you copy the information you need before inputting into Inkscape? Thanks
@@mtopxsecret6 The .pdf is just a file that I downloaded from the internet and pulled up in Inkscape. I also use .jpg files. Pretty much any file that Inkscape will pull up is good to go.
Hi again, one more question. When you have the pdf in Adobe, have you got the page size set to fit A4 size, or set to actual size, and then copying and pasting over to inkscape? Ive been thinking about this over the past week while im waiting for my cricute machine to arrive. Thanks
@@mtopxsecret6 I have never even thought about it. I just open the .pdf with Inkscape and then save it immediately as a .svg file. After that, I use Inkscape to size the drawing to whatever size I want it to be. If the drawing has a scale on it I use that. If not, I pick a feature, such as wingspan, and size the drawing to the wingspan that I want. I again save it to my hard drive. After is is sized the way I want, I start drawing out the parts.
To further clarify, when I open the .pdf file with Inkscape, I first ensure that the Height/Width scales are locked so that I do not distort the image. Then I grab a corner of the drawing and enlarge or reduce it to get the scale that I want.
Just got my Cricut maker today. I have some balsa projects that I specifically bought it for. I am hooking it up as I am watching your video. I am seriously impressed with the fact that it didn't rip or tear the balsa wood. After watching this video, I am going to be very happy that I bought one!
Glad the video was helpful. On the tearing issue, make sure you use relatively new balsa wood. If the balsa is old and has dried out, it WILL tear out as it cuts.
How long of lines? Where is the C\G how much line rake? Ours was a miserable disaster last week with my daughter launching. We were on 35 ft lines and it would not hold line tension..and did very weird flat spin..would be awesome if you did a video showing exactly how yours is set up and ballances..
Mark, you're a great teacher! I am a prof in a local university, and trust me there are lots of instructors who don't know how to teach even though they are employed by the same school for decades. Good work!
Man that flies good!! Just had a bugger of a time with the one I got to train my daughters..last night we went out and it was in flyable..engine running sweet..line.tension non existant..tried more tip weight..came in on me..four tries engine mount gave up..going to the hobby shop to get a LilWizard.
any advice for basswood. i have tried cutting 1/16th inch basswood dinosaur puzzles and they always fail on the first cut pass of the knife blade. ive tried with a cricut maker, and a maker 3. ive been very frustrated
Sorry, I've only tried a basswood cut two times, and I was not satisfied either time. It may be able to cut basswood, but not in a detailed manner. Maybe jigsaw puzzle type cuts. I use my machine exclusively for balsa.
@@PunkRockBenWilson I have cut many, many airplane kits out of balsa. The only cautions I have are that the balsa is not too old and dry, as it tears rather than cuts, and try not to make the cuts too close to the edge, as the balsa will crack close to the edge after a couple of passes and it might spoil that part. Just remember to do a calibration before you start cutting, and use a good mat. I bought a cheap set of mats and they wood didn't stay stuck in place an it messed up the cuts on one side of the piece. Also, if it's really good, light balsa it might only take two or three passes instead of all four passes.
I do not. I am involved in so many different hobbies that I have to limit my "joining". I did a FF as an example because I think that this is where the Cricut could really shine, but I'm more of a 1/2A control line guy. I also just joined the local RC club last week and I'm going to be cutting 1/2A RC planes. That's in between working on my Vette and my full size Experimental Homebuilt aircraft...
As a newbie, I found this quite helpful. Using the free Adobe Reader, I couldn't select a portion of a pdf to paste into Inkscape. I tried a screenshot in Windows but that too failed, though it pastes into Paint. I was able to open my pdf plan as a file directly in Inkscape and added a layer to do the tracing. You can toggle visibility of the pdf layer and move and orient the part outlines independently on its layer. I'm struggling to get the line/fill colours to work but toggling pdf layer visibility on and off works to verify tracing alignment and allows measurement without showing competing pdf lines.
Different versions of Reader are a little different in how to do the copy. To copy a section for importing somewhere else, try selecting the "Edit" tab, then on the drop down, select "More". You should see the "Take a Snapshot" selection. Click on that, and then draw a box around what you want to copy.
My MSI gaming laptop seems to have challenges with Inkscape and Acrobat Reader DC though it does fine with other graphics and video editing software. Trying to open a JPG in Inkscape just shows a red X. Colors for fill, text and stroke do not display for objects in Inkscape. Opening a file I created in Inkscape in Edge show the selected colors and opening in Notepad shows the values of the colors. Opening free downloaded colored SVG files in Inkscape displays the same results: black text and outlines and no colored fill. I want to enlarge the Hellcat pdf files provided by truckerboy on RCGroups from a span of 16 to 20 inches and convert Metric to Imperial wood sizes which would change the stringer, spar, leading edge, trailing edge, horizontal stabilizer etc cutouts. The pdfs open directly in inkscape and I can delete the text part piece identifiers. Looking at the pdf object tree, every path is nested on a duplicate guide and all paths are duplicated twice. I deleted a set of duplicate paths and moved all paths to a single guide deleting the empty ones. I merged the parts of each layer of the laminated cowl parts so they are a single part and, perhaps unnecessarily, separated parts that had a shared cut line. More cuts but maybe more accurate. The vertical stab/rudder separation was removed. Examining the node coordinates for being centered, I fine tuned a few. I'll draw a few plans by pen in the Cricut to ensure scaling is correct. I plan to make stringer cutout squares, duplicate and place them tangentially around former curves, perform a boolean Venn cut with the squares and run balsa trial cuts to see how the square size works at various angles to the grain.
HI Mark! Your plans already had the parts very close together ready for cutting. How do i transfer parts from a larger plan to fit a 3”x23” balsa sized group image for cutting? Thanks! Chris
The best way for me to describe it is to first trace each individual part that you need. Then, using the Document Properties selection in the File tab, set the units to "in". Then set the Width to 3 inches and the Height to 23 inches. This will give you a long rectangular box on the screen denoting the area of the balsa sheet. Move the individual parts to the box and arrange them to fit the box. You'll probably have to rotate or flip the parts to get the best fit on your balsa sheet. On the tutorial I used 12" Width and 3" Height, but after I got things arranged the way I wanted I rotated the whole thing so it was aligned vertically to work on the Maker machine.
I've followed you step by step while watching video but when I select the joystick tab it says no joy stick detected, I'm using a radiomaster tx16s and windows 10 pc. I can't figure out why it's not detected? Any help will be appreciated thanks
Sorry, it's been five years since I did this. Is the Radiomaster a simulator box or a transmitter? I am not familiar with it. I have only used simulator boxes for PicaSim. Maybe check out the PicaSim website for tips on using an actual transmitter.
That's the great thing about a bladder. Pressure is determined by the size and thickness of the tubing. Pressure will remain pretty much steady until just before the bladder runs out of fuel, regardless of how much fuel you put in.
