Cloud diver at open sauce??? (I forgot what I did during the 45 minutes it’s been a long week here at outpost)
CAD Version 2
only 4 hours of cad later, i’ve fixed hopefully most of the problems with version 1, the parts fit together now with printed pins, and its much more compact. the electronics pay and the payload bay have been fused to make wiring and whatnot easier, and to keep the sensitive electronics upwind of the open section of the payload bay. also the tail servos have pilot holes now… learned that lesson the hard way.
But:
the actual physical implement wont be updated to v2 for a while. I plan to reprint the nose, tail, and payload bay and assemble those with the current parts to make a weird v1.5 hybrid monster for more flight testing. also it will have the outer wings… soon…
Two steps forward, one step back
I’ve been busy these last few days… First things first
INITAL FLIGHT HARDWARE ASSEMBLY
I’ve scrounged together a bunch of (kinda subpar) parts to use for flight testing while I wait for my grant, meaning I have just enough bits and bobs to bring this thing to life, especially now that (most) of the printed stuff is done (with the exception of the payload bay and outer wings) with “minimal” fit errors (the wings are a bit of a pain but c’est la vie)
GROUND TESTING
I installed flight critical hardware (no data logging yet, coming soon while i print off the next batch of parts… more on that later) and it works! the EDF is more powerful than i expected, and its got a hell of a moment around the COM, which…. yeah, more on that in a minute. The rudder/elevon/aileron things work great as well.
DISASTER
I got over confident and went “Oh yeah I can totally get this thing flying no problem even with half the wings missing and subpar electronics and random test parts in place of a payload bay” (spoiler alert: no) and tried to fly it. the combination of the moment i mentioned earlier, plus limited wing area, plus needing three hands to launch the bloody thing meant that it immediately nose-dived into the dirt… and broke the tail in half, bent the wing spars, bent the frame, and managed to disconnect the trasmitter from the esc… not great
WHAT NEXT
Well, I want to go to outpost, so I’m waiting on final approval there, but in the mean time i’ve done lots of little cad improvements, so now there will be actual connectors between segments, meaning less gaps and hopefully less bending. i’ve also changed the output duct for the EDF, so now it deflects upwards slightly, hopefully offsetting the moment and easing its nose down tendencies. I’ve got a cheeky idea for a wing locking mechanism for the outer edges to allow for a less sketchy take off, but thats not quite ready yet.
WE HAVE A GITHUB
(come take a look at github.com/harro09-07/cloud-diver)
Also yes I lied again this is still not the build devlog. I’m applying for funding now because it turns out ESCs are expensive and I don’t have any
Also I’ve had a rather devilish idea for an air launch mount for this thing so there might be another devlog today.
Cloud Diver Side show time!
this is designed to use much of the same parts as cloud diver, and act as a testbed for some future enhancements, the most notable being wings designed to deform to act as control surfaces, which should hopefully reduce drag on this airframe, and improve flight characteristics on cloud diver. it also has the goal of reaching high speeds, at the moment the goal is 100 miles per hour.
I know I said the next Devlog would be assembly, but I had some odds and ends to tie up, and I spent an embarrassing amount of time designing a part that wont actually work.
printing the first section of the wings, by my estimate it will take about 16 hours for that, plus another 16 for the tail. Payload bay won’t be printed until the second prototype, I want to make sure I’m not building an unflyable brick.
Cad V1.1 and the prototype!
Cad v1.1 is primarily focused on adding in the practical segments, mostly the payload bay (to be installed between the nose and wingbox) and battery bay (to be installed just aft of the wingbox.
The prototype, on the other hand, is rather less refined. at the moment all that has been printed is the rudderons, nose, and wingbox (though part of the tail is being printed as i write this). the problem is these parts are quite long, and my poor old printer has a z limit of 210mm, so that, along with constant print failures, has made assembly a long and painful process.
next devlog will be me putting the whole thing together (hopefully).
Cad V 1.0 is done! Last additions were a camera mount on the nose, internal geometry for mounting the big servo to pull the outer wing segments in, and a small fin on the tail to give it a bit of yaw stability (in theory). Printing has started, but ive only succeeded in making the rudderons and the nose before my old prusa MK3 decided to throw a fit and now nothing works. next devlog may well just be me doing a full teardown for maintenance on the old thing (it counts as project time right?) I’ve also started getting parts, currently just the structural rods and the EDF, but more should arrive soon(ish)
A bit of a side quest, a system to divert most of the outflow from the 50mm EDF to the rudderons, which should (in theory) give it a bunch of control authority. Meanwhile printing the test parts for the wings continues but slowly, given I’m having bed adhesion issues.
Engine Mount for a 50mm EDF added to wingbox, initial rudderon prototypes 3d printing
Initial CAD assembly and failing to set up CFD software
