Last weekend I’ve got some time to work on our model engine again. I reviewed the original control panel I designed some time ago:

As I wrote before this is all fake. Very loosely inspired in some real engines, but not following anything in particular.

The Institute of Flight here in the Pacific Northwest organizes workshops for 3D printing. Also, on Mondays, you can simply go the Maker space and print stuff for a small fee. (If you are a member, you just pay the materials). So we took our design and gave it a try:

That’s a ~30 min, $5 print. The printer is a Flashforge Dreamer, and the piece was printed on 0.2mm resolution.

The stuff below the handle are supporting structures that the printing software will automatically generate and are easy to trim.

I like (very much) TinkerCAD for simpler designs. Portable, easy to learn, fun to use. The Maker space coach at the Institute of Flight was kind enough to give me a quick Sketchup tour, and that seems a little bit more powerful for more complex designs. So, I added it to the (ever growing) list of “things to learn”.