FlatRoll Airfoil
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Published on April 24, 2009
This thing was Featured on April 25, 2009
Description
An application of the design concept behind the Heptagonal Column ( thingiverse.com/thing:482 ) to a standard Clark Y airfoil.
Like the column, this assumes that Skeinforge will print the zero thickness faces with enough flexibility to support bending/folding there. This is an experiment and I would be surprised if some adjustments weren't required...
EDIT: Nophead pointed out that, in fact, zero thickness faces don't print out. Luckily, this is easily fixable since the big, flat underside can be adjusted handily with a push-pull or extrude command in most CAD programs. Here's an example of that: thingiverse.com/thing:485
EDIT2: Jay Swift had a brainwave and pointed out that you could print this out on a flexible sheet of plastic. This is brilliant, because the sheet would replace the zero thickness face on the bottom. You would just have to trim the sheet before you rolled it up.
Like the column, this assumes that Skeinforge will print the zero thickness faces with enough flexibility to support bending/folding there. This is an experiment and I would be surprised if some adjustments weren't required...
EDIT: Nophead pointed out that, in fact, zero thickness faces don't print out. Luckily, this is easily fixable since the big, flat underside can be adjusted handily with a push-pull or extrude command in most CAD programs. Here's an example of that: thingiverse.com/thing:485
EDIT2: Jay Swift had a brainwave and pointed out that you could print this out on a flexible sheet of plastic. This is brilliant, because the sheet would replace the zero thickness face on the bottom. You would just have to trim the sheet before you rolled it up.
Instructions
Print it out, roll it up, voila! Wing section. :-)
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License
FlatRoll Airfoil by syvwlch is licensed under the Attribution - Share Alike - Creative Commons license.
More from syvwlch
I'm not sure what happened, but I got an email notification of a great comment from Jay Swift, but the comment doesn't show up here.
I like the idea, so I'll quote it here:
"Why not print on to a plastic sheet that is already flexible? You could then roll the model up and glue it in place (maybe with acetone) and then remove the flexible sheet"
Since Nophead pointed out that Skeinforge is unlikely to print zero thickness faces, this might actually be a great way to make this work... except you wouldn't remove the sheet at the end, just trim it to size.
This is a very unique design, good work.
I would be very interested to see it printed out and assembled.