Fun Share

[Shoeless]

So this has nothing to do with the GTM whatsoever, but here is a cool 1 min video of the Pratt & Whitney TJ150 I helped pioneer all the 3D printing work on. I ended up with a total of 21 patents over 4 years of work on this platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDQsiHB929g

[beeman]

very cool!

[q4stix]

Great to see what people work on and that's neat stuff!
I'm only at a quarter of your patent count though

[Shoeless]

Great to see what people work on and that's neat stuff!
I'm only at a quarter of your patent count though

Always fun sharing this type of stuff with like minded people. We came up with some really cool stuff to address the challenges of printing an entire jet engine. The entire static hot section is printed out of one piece

Sometimes dealing with the lawyers is a PITA, but fun when they get approved, and I still get residual pay from P&W and haven't worked there in over 2 years.

[Al_C]

I grew up near P&W in central Connecticut and they were always coming up with interesting new technologies. The entire Connecticut River valley was full of aircraft-related engineering and manufacturing. (Kaman, Sikorsky, Hamilton Standard, you name it) I'm curious where you are located and where these engines were developed and being built.

[Power Surge]

So.....can we expect to see the first JATO GTM?

[crash]

I had a friend that had over 60 patents. His products are still being mass produced today.

He lived quite well off of the income associated with those...until he died from cancer.

But his wife and son are still doing well because of those patents.

Congrats to you for yours. I hope they serve you and your family well.

[Shoeless]

I grew up near P&W in central Connecticut and they were always coming up with interesting new technologies. The entire Connecticut River valley was full of aircraft-related engineering and manufacturing. (Kaman, Sikorsky, Hamilton Standard, you name it) I'm curious where you are located and where these engines were developed and being built.

I’m out of the West Palm Beach P&W facility as this is where the business builds and sells the TJ150-1 and -2 engines out of. All the additive design, modeling, and 3d printing was done at the Research Center in CT. We then assembled and tested in West Palm Beach as we had the production test cell for it. They wanted me to come back and work for them to help industrialize this to the next step. Looks like they are doing well with it.

[Shoeless]

I had a friend that had over 60 patents. His products are still being mass produced today.

He lived quite well off of the income associated with those...until he died from cancer.

But his wife and son are still doing well because of those patents.

Congrats to you for yours. I hope they serve you and your family well.

I wish these were all self developed, but since we used millions in P&W investment and their multi-million dollar research center, P&W gets most the benifit. We do get paid for them, just not any long term royalties. I’ll take what I can get

[frankenford]

Hey shawn, What would you recommend for a 3d printer for a beginner? Since the holidays are around the corner I am going to try to find someone upgrading and hopefully selling an older model for cheap. Just want to tinker and maybe print off some accessories for my pack out boxes for work.

[Just 1 More]

Love the hose clamp LOL

[Shoeless]

Sometimes a hose clamp is all you need to hold things together on a limited life engine. This particular one was limited to 2 hrs of flight time.

[Shoeless]

Hey shawn, What would you recommend for a 3d printer for a beginner? Since the holidays are around the corner I am going to try to find someone upgrading and hopefully selling an older model for cheap. Just want to tinker and maybe print off some accessories for my pack out boxes for work.

Sure thing. Sorry for my delay with the holidays. I'd highly recommend an Creality Ender 3. There are lots of different versions available so research a little bit on Amazon and you will be good to go. You can't go wrong with an Ender 3 to start out. I still have my Ender 3 I bought years ago and it still runs wonderfully with an upgraded extruder after about 2-3 years of operation my print quality fell off and I started replacing parts. The upgraded extruder did the trick to get me back printing. I used this thing in so many areas of the GTM build. From mocking things up, to making drill templates, to making actual parts that are on my car to this day. The possibilities are truly endless.

I wish I had a cool million to buy a metal printer like the one I used on the above project. Hell I may have someone design me new GTM logos and have someone print them in TI 6-4 simply because I can

[Power Surge]

Realistically, how strong of a part can you really print with an entry level 3D printer? I've always been interested in it but I've always heard you can't really print anything functional with an entry level unit.

[Shoeless]

You have to define functional.

For instance, I wanted to create a button plate to mount on the tunnel wall just to the right side of my right leg to move the window buttons, air cup button, and USB charger to out of carbon fiber. So should I just design something and cut it out of expensive carbon fiber and hope my design works first time out of the gate? Hell no. So I iterated my design, printing a mock up panel out each time, installing the buttons, and seeing how I liked the fit, form, and function. I probably make 5-6 iterations, some with very small changes until I was 100% happy. Then I sent it to my guy to cut out of carbon fiber. Perfect carbon fiber part the first time.

Would I want to design and print something structural off my hobby printer, absolutely not, but there are many options here as well. If I really want a somewhat structural part, I can design and print it out of PLA, mock it up until I'm happen and then send to someone that can print out of let's say carbon infused media to make it super strong and expect it to be right the first time. There are tons of companies that will print your designs, even out of metal, for somewhat reasonable costs.

Are there many nonstructural items you can print on a GTM, absolutely. For example, the Stance front air cups need air lines to go from the compressor to the cups. You can run the airlines only a couple ways and most of those are not elegant solutions. So, what did I do? I ordered fittings for the airlines to pass them through the wheel well wall near my wheel speed sensor wires, but needed a way to hold the fittings in place. I designed a two-piece solution that sandwiches the fitting inside of them, epoxying them together, and then riveted them to the wheel well wall. Perfect non-structural part that solved a problem in an elegant way. Hell, even if I need to print replacements and redo them, it about $0.05 of material and a little time. For this design, I probably iterated 20+ times to get something I was happy with. Where the two piece epoxy together, its not just one flat surface attached to another. I designed oval cavities inside each half at the mating joint so that the epoxy has some "meat" to hold onto. I tested probably 5 versions of this, breaking each one to see which was the strongest and then went forward with that design. Again, all this took was my time and probably total less than $5 in materials including the epoxy.

[Power Surge]

Excellent points you make there!

[Shoeless]

Here are the stance air cup fittings and the final solution.







Another temporary mock up panel to hold buttons in go cart stage so I can test them while driving and not have them just laying on the floor getting all scratched up (in front of and behind shifter).



Collection of items.

[crash]

Such an amazing build you have going there Shoeless. Almost a shame to get it dirty. Almost.

[Shoeless]

Thanks crash!!

That will definitely be a balance, drive, clean, drive clean LOL.

[ohmygosuness]

Damn, Shoeless! That is a clean build, literally. Can't even see a speck of dust lol.

[maclonchas]

Shoeless,

Great work and definitely understand how you utilized these techniques while not having to wait on parts as yo continued to develop final solutions. That is one area I wished I had spent more time working on as a technology while I was designing in the defense industry. Do you mind sharing some of your slice files for your parts?

Thanks
Bill

[Shoeless]

For whatever reason, my Reply with Quote doesn't work on my work computer. Probably stupid security crap.

Re: ohmygosuness - Thank you Sir!! I am pretty particular about how I work and spending 17 years in the aerospace industry FOD (foreign object debris) kills engines, so I guess I try to stay as clean as possible

Re: Bill - Sure, I can share some of the files, will be a good time for me to set them aside in the proper spot for easy reference later. Some will need some scaling as I think I'm loosing that when I convert the files to what I need for slicing in the printer software. Easy solution, print a piece, measure the output against the part, get a scale factor, apply that and reprint. Just note they were for my personal use so may not be the most user friendly to share and immediately be usable. Send me a PM with your email and I'll send you some of what I pulled together.