Another Sub Hunter?

I could certainly make a new stand for the existing balancer but at the moment the prop is good enough.
Spent a ridiculous amount of time 'playing' with the printer but I do at least have the basis of the U/C.

The links allow a good 40 mm of suspension travel.
The original Seamew was noted for a lack of bounce on landing, a useful attribute for a carrier plane.
From the photos when sitting on the ground the suspension travel was pretty well compressed but in the air it hung down at full extension.
I would guess quite a bit of the initial travel was just damped with springing only tacking effect towards the end of compression.

A bit more playing and the U/C is rather closer to its final form and printed in silver!

The wheel hub is printed in the "alternate segment" style that the prototype actually used.
This is about as far as I can go. The design of top part of the leg and how it is fixed to the wing will have to wait until at least the wing centre is designed.

Have you seen the newly available fluorescent oranges and reds filaments?
If you can change colours in mid-print, you could create red-hot glowing brake-hubs! [badass]

The latest instalment of not really doing very much....create a Depron "tyre" for the printed hub.
The four 6mm blanks CAD designed! :ohmy:

Note the tyre is hollow!
The complete wheel mounted in the fork.

It is 64 mm (2.5") diam and including the fork weighs just 5.8 g.

That nose leg assy looks so real.

With the demise of the Cessna I can start thinking more seriously about actually building the Seamew.
The RH wing outline tile printed.

It is not particularly big -1.5 m span - but it has a low aspect ratio and substantial area.

The next step is to think exactly how the U/C is going to be fixed in the wing or rather to the spar.
It needs to be 'plug in' so there has to be a 7 mm hole, the diam of the upper part of the leg, in the wing that has sufficient strength to withstand the bending loads from its rather "stalky" undercarriage resulting from its mid wing layout.
Out to the undercarriage mounting the wing will have a more substantial spar than the rest of the wing.
The wing has the same section (NACA 23012) from root to tip so it favours using printed ribs scaled from a 'master'. This way the wing section may not be absolutely correct but at least they will all be exactly the same.

The RH rib at the undercarriage station with an integrated plugin 'insert' that will be glued between the wood spar flanges.


The Warren braced rib is light but remarkably stiff.
The intention is to get a complete 'plug in' undercarriage assembly working before I actually start building the wing.

Scale printing the ribs from a master sounds simple but it this case you actually need five!

1. A root type - a complete rib with small cutouts for the deeper spar flanges.
2. Flap type A - a rib truncated at the line of the flaps but with spar cutouts.
3. Flap type B - As before but without the spar cutouts.
4. Aileron type - Truncated but at the position of the narrower chord ailerons.
5. Tip type - the same as the root but without cutouts.

Each of these masters were created from the same master plot points so have exactly the same outer profile. Each will be scaled in CURA to print the various sizes.

I would be willing to bet that just cutting Depron ribs by hand slightly over size and finish sanding 'by eye' would be just as effective aerodynamically!