N1226-9 Airplane

This project was super fun. Unfortunately, it was not completed and is still in progress; I'm just taking a break from it and planning to return after I have learned the necessary skills. Such as simulation work, proper stress analysis, and material properties here at college. The original inspiration was this absurd thought of seeing a 6-foot RC airplane taking off from the high school football field. The thought brought a smile to my face and luckily enough I was able to work on it as a school project.

At first, I designed the RC schematic I would be using to control the airplane and the functioning landing gear flaps and multiple control surfaces. After designing I did some test wiring in class and tested the engines as well as servo controls. With the wiring figured out I started to work on the CAD modeling in Fusion 360.

The modeling took a while, first starting with an outline of the body using surfaces before remodeling a skeleton from the ground up. This was to ensure I could support the electronics where they needed to be in 3D space. This modeling was crucial to the success and resulted in errors I made and have since learned from ultimately leading me to pause the project during the next step.

After feeling confident with the model I began laser cutting and 3D printing pieces, ordering parts, and eventually began assembly. First assembling the frame, then the electrical components and testing. Everything was going well as I put on the skin, and got the landing gear and flaps fully functioning. One day during testing as a break from securing the outer skin section, and when I was not so bright, I accidentally put my fingers too close to the fast-spinning engine and got them sucked in. Ultimately I was okay but unfortunately broke the engine meaning I would need to rip it out and replace it. By rip it out I mean truly rip it out.

In my hopes of finishing the project before the start of college, I had rushed through the end of the design phase without taking into account reparability. This meant the engine was screwed into wood that was glued directly into the superstructure of the wing, with a hot glued plastic shell around the engine forming the casing. This ultimately is what led me to put the project on pause for now and plan to revisit it in the future as at that point, I had a month before I went to college and at least a month of replacing the engine.

In the future, I hope to do a redesign from the ground up as when I was building my concern grew with the increasing weight. Overall though, I learned many skills from this project even though it wasn't a success this is one of my favorites. I learned a lot about CAD and assembly management, as well as structural design in terms of how to connect members and plan for different loads. In the future I will learn stress analysis, material properties, as well as simulations in my studies at college, hopefully allowing me to take another crack at this and produce a working RC airplane.

Major Skills I learned:

Cad & Large Assemblies (Fusion)
3D Renders (Fusion)
Tolerances (The Importance of)
RC Electronics
Timeline Management
Testing
Order of operations in assembly applications

(This photo is from when I started mounting servos, after finishing the frame. It shows the true scale of what I was trying to build.)

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