After getting the printer back to work, I ended up taking a long break from the V2 project. I definitely hit a "commitment wall" and needed the time away from the project. So the last couple of weekends I devoted to REALLY cleaning up the mad-scientist-lab/mancave, which had become so cluttered and full of dust from all the sanding I'd been doing that it was getting pretty depressing. I built a vacuum system to suck up as much dust as possible where I do the sanding work, cleaned and rehung every one of my 1/18 aircraft (something like 40 of them in the two rooms), installed new lighting, and organized and stored EVERYTHING in sealed plastic containers. There are now multiple flat surfaces in my Fortress of Solitude that actually have nothing on them. This hasn't been the case since shortly after we built our dream house seven years ago.
I feel better now ...
So ... this weekend it was back to work on the V2:
Fins. Here's a pic of the latest fin version (on the right), printed and fit up for gluing:
A shot of the same layout, looking down into the engine section. You can get an idea of what completely unfinished parts look like on the new fin, and also see the internal structure inside a a finished engine section (which has the most parts):
Here's the new fin version after gluing and one mostly-sanded coat of heavy green putty to address the biggest gaps between the parts, and the areas that have the roughest surface from the printing process:
Here are four of the new fins, ready for a final coat of filler primer. This is after green putty, sanding, latex paste, sanding, and a couple of sanded coats of filler primer:
The most visible design change here is that the aero-flap is no longer printed into the bottom part of the fin. I was getting poor delineation of this feature with other improvements I've made in the fin structure and fillet contour, so I'm now making that a separate part. I've got that at a first-pass-acceptable printed version, but haven't experimented with finishing.
Here are some pics showing early assembly processes I've perfected, on parts going into the next full version of the rocket.
First is a pic of one of the internal connectors used to join the outer shell components of the engine section. This pic shows the "strings" of excess plastic on the top that result when the registration tabs are printed. These are very easily cut away with an X-Acto knife. The part is still on its printing raft and "sacrificial base," an element that has to be cut away:
On thicker-section parts, this requires use of a hobby saw, like this:
This pic shows the sawing process on the external shell piece that creates the slots for the upper tab on the fins. The sawing process isn't difficult, as I've got a slight indentation designed into the part to guide the saw. Patience and a moderately steady hand gets a part like this off its base in about a minute or less.
Here's a pic of a thin-section piece being separated from its printing base:
This is the bottom of the uppermost outer body wall segment of the engine section. Because the plastic is printed so thin, separating it from the print base requires getting the separation started with an X-Acto knife and then "zipping" the plastic along a perforation I've designed into the print. This pic shows the result after "unzipping" off the perforated plastic of the base:
As you can see, even with all the practice I've had, the separation isn't perfect. But a very small amount of sanding (laying the piece flat onto a sheet of paper and twisting it along the rocket's roll axis) smooths it out perfectly.
And here's where I am now:
The rocket factory early this morning. The fins and engine section in the foreground are the latest version. The engine section body is ready for a first coat of primer filler.
I have no projection whatsoever for when I may be "finished." I'm back to having fun, so I'm not going to let myself feel pressured right now ...
