Nose-Gear Retract Construction
This was a tough task for me as this is my first time constructing a fully functional Gear-Door Closing sequence for any scratch-builds i have made, but i've enjoyed every moment figuring out ways to build the mechanical linkages to open and close the Gear-Doors using as little servos as possible (One servo did the trick).
There was many many trial and error involved such as getting the correct length of the linkages and connecting to different servo-arm length to fine tune the whole system.
Main doors are hinged with a wooden swinging arm while the Aft Doors are hinged with tape. The swinging arm is made out of 2mm plywood and an acrylic mini casing to pivot the swinging arm. After which the acrylic mini casing was embedded into the foam in their respective places. The location to place the swinging axis is extremely important as it can be a result of a smooth working door or a jammed one. I've decided to go for 2 hinges per door instead of the 3 hinges to save complexity and unwanted mechanical load.
After getting the entire mechanical and linkages system right, the whole system, the landing gear, steering servo ,door servo and the linkages was attached into one single block. Reason is to keep the design neat and compact so that the last step of glueing the nose gear to the fuselage will be a 1-time/step process which was hassle free.
For the Nose-Gear system,there are total of 4 doors to control,In summary the system will be:
Main doors
Door servo --> twin mechanical 90° servo arm --> linkage to 2 Main doors
Aft Doors
Landing Gear Down --> Physically push opens the 2 Aft Doors
Landing Gear Up --> Rubber Bands elastically retract the 2 Aft Doors
Here is the video of the whole system functioning.
This was a tough task for me as this is my first time constructing a fully functional Gear-Door Closing sequence for any scratch-builds i have made, but i've enjoyed every moment figuring out ways to build the mechanical linkages to open and close the Gear-Doors using as little servos as possible (One servo did the trick).
There was many many trial and error involved such as getting the correct length of the linkages and connecting to different servo-arm length to fine tune the whole system.
Main doors are hinged with a wooden swinging arm while the Aft Doors are hinged with tape. The swinging arm is made out of 2mm plywood and an acrylic mini casing to pivot the swinging arm. After which the acrylic mini casing was embedded into the foam in their respective places. The location to place the swinging axis is extremely important as it can be a result of a smooth working door or a jammed one. I've decided to go for 2 hinges per door instead of the 3 hinges to save complexity and unwanted mechanical load.
After getting the entire mechanical and linkages system right, the whole system, the landing gear, steering servo ,door servo and the linkages was attached into one single block. Reason is to keep the design neat and compact so that the last step of glueing the nose gear to the fuselage will be a 1-time/step process which was hassle free.
For the Nose-Gear system,there are total of 4 doors to control,In summary the system will be:
Main doors
Door servo --> twin mechanical 90° servo arm --> linkage to 2 Main doors
Aft Doors
Landing Gear Down --> Physically push opens the 2 Aft Doors
Landing Gear Up --> Rubber Bands elastically retract the 2 Aft Doors
Here is the video of the whole system functioning.
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