Hi, David talked about the difficulty of building the bubble canopy for the FT_Racer/Slinger. I had a couple of ideas and decided to try one out today.
I modeled a bubble canopy (not any specific design) in my 3D app (LightWave 3D) and loaded into Pepakura Designer to break up into foldable pieces. I did go back and forth between the apps quite a bit to simplify the model quite a bit.
Unfortunately, I don't have a printer handy to print out the pattern to see if this is a viable construction method for myself right now. I'm uploading the pattern here if anyone wants to give it a go. It might be best to try with regular paper first.
Pepakura is software for turning 3D models/object into patterns to reconstruct the model out of paper. I don't have the full version, so I couldn't export or save the pattern, but I was able to "print" it to a PDF file. You can add textures to the object so your object can be in color.
Basically, Cut the solid lines. Fold on the dotted lines. The white pieces are tabs. I set the tabs up so the frame and the canopy could be assembled separately and then glued together at the end. I should probably have extended the sides further.
This is based on the FT_Racer plans. I'm not sure if the scale carried over through the whole process.
Thanks.
I modeled a bubble canopy (not any specific design) in my 3D app (LightWave 3D) and loaded into Pepakura Designer to break up into foldable pieces. I did go back and forth between the apps quite a bit to simplify the model quite a bit.
Unfortunately, I don't have a printer handy to print out the pattern to see if this is a viable construction method for myself right now. I'm uploading the pattern here if anyone wants to give it a go. It might be best to try with regular paper first.
Pepakura is software for turning 3D models/object into patterns to reconstruct the model out of paper. I don't have the full version, so I couldn't export or save the pattern, but I was able to "print" it to a PDF file. You can add textures to the object so your object can be in color.
Basically, Cut the solid lines. Fold on the dotted lines. The white pieces are tabs. I set the tabs up so the frame and the canopy could be assembled separately and then glued together at the end. I should probably have extended the sides further.
This is based on the FT_Racer plans. I'm not sure if the scale carried over through the whole process.
Thanks.