Week 4 April 21-27

This week we brought in the foam and had the CAD drawing printed out to scale in order to cut the plane out accordingly. 

Foam for Main Body

The foam is 10"X30" and fuselage will be 22".  The wings will also be cut out and have a wing span of 18".   These will be cut out and glued together.  The team is working on cutting it out.  To prep for it, the drawings from last week will be printed out in order to be used as stencils on the foam.

KKmulticontroller v.5.5

In the mean time, research was also conducted on trying to discover how to have the plane hover evenly while the rotors are vertical.  The KKmulticontroller v.5.5 “Blackboard”
The Multicopter Flight Controller was found to be the best piece to use.  It will be able to keep the plane in a stable while hovering in order to keep it from flying in an unordered fashion.  This board can control anywhere from 2 to 6 rotors with the simple purpose of stabilizing the aircraft while flying.  It performs this action by taking signals from three different gyros and reads it on its integrated circuit board which processes the information and then sends out a control signal to the Electronic Speed Controllers which are attached to both the board and the motors.  Depending on the signal from circuit board, the electronic speed controllers will either speed the motors up for slow them down in order to keep the aircraft level. Along with keeping the aircraft in a steady flight, it will also allow the aircraft to move forwards, backwards, left, right, up, and down.  This piece of technology will prove to be most helpful when engineering this airplane.

Week 3 post April 14-20

Figure 1: BVertol Ofsprey

 We created a Cad model that can be cut out by a laser cutting in machine which cuts foam.  We will either have the body laser cut or hand cut it ourselves.  We have also created a 3 dimensional version in Creo Parametrics.  This will serve as a useful reference when creating the plane in order to give a general idea of where everything goes.  These models will hopefully help us put the plane together once all the parts come in.  They are all ordered and will hopefully be in by next week. 

Figure 2: Creo Model of Airplane

Figure 3: Creo Model of Airplane

 In Figure 2 and figure 3, a model was created in Creo Parametrics 1.0 to give a rough 3-D sketch of the airplane.  It does not have its propellers or motors on it yet as they are still being worked on.  Figure 4 is a CAD drawing which can be read by a laser foam cutter that can be used to cut the plane out without and human work.  These drawings will prove to be valuable as the team receives all the materials and can begin fabrication.
   The team also did research to find out all the required materials and found that they would need the following; Propellers - provides thrust required to move the airplane Propeller Adapters - fastens propellers to the motor Carbon Fiber Rod - gives strength to the airplane's wings Foam - the substance the airplane is composed of Battery - a source of power for all electronics Servos - provide movement to all control surfaces Motors - provide thrust to give the airplane flight Electronic speed controllers(ESC's) - regulates the motor's electricity consumption 3-Axis flight stabilizer - stabilizes the airplane's movement while hovering.

Figure 4: CAD model for laser cutting

These parts were all ordered from  hobbyking.com and valuehobby.com.  The total cost came to $130 split between the five members.  This is all the research and work that was performed with week and the group hopes to start building next week. 

Second Week, April 7-14, Sketching and Dimension

Week 2
Today we started talking about the basics of the plane and how the plane will operate.  We did some research on how the making of the plane is possible.  We looked up forums of other people who have created them before in order to get an idea of weight distribution and sizing.  We found this forum extremely helpful, http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1496110.  We decided that the airplane have a wingspan of 18' x 3.5'  with an area of 63.5 cube inches.  Then we continued to look into the different weights of the plane and how to distribute it correctly.  We will be using foam for the main frame of the plane, and the motors may be supported by a carbon fiber bar that spans across the wings.  Some plans will be drawn up on how to cut the foam, and a laser cutter may be used to cut out the foam, otherwise it will be cut out by hand.  We planned to meet at least twice a week outside of class in order to work on the robot. This is all we covered during this meeting.

Week 1, March 31 - April 6, Ideas

During the first week we were introduced with a project of recreating a wind turbine to conduct electricity.  The group decided they did not want to fabricate that, but instead came up with other ideas.  The group decided on a Model VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) airplane.  These model planes are not currently on the market for purchasing and only a few people have attempted to create them.  The group saw this as an opportunity to create a model airplane that was not so simple to create.  They brainstormed and came up with the idea.  Mark Petro-Roy will be leading the group, as he has a strong foundation in replicating model airplanes.  The group went to work in the first week to  look into ordering the necessary parts and laying out a plan and timeline of when they will finish their major tasks. This concluded the works of week one.