The intake forms were cut from the card stock sheet.
I cut curves with scissors and the straight lines with a knife and straight edge.
To smooth out the curve sand with some 400 grit.
I pre-curved the pieces with the back end of a Sharpie in the heel of my hand.
There was a crease in the card stock, you can see it right above the pen barrel.
GOTCHA! The pieces weren't long enough! When set at the center lines the edges don't reach the body tube. Both were cut right on the black border edges.
I'll have to trace two wider pieces on some 110 lb. card stock.
I found this interesting - The instruction sheet shows the same "U" piece in the same direction on the front and rear of the intake. The side view has it correct.
Not a big deal but it could confuse a builder.
Actually, the image showing the gluing the "U" pieces is accurate as far as I can tell (I checked the image by fiddling around with the image in MS Paint. The "square" edges of the pieces -- i.e. the rear edge of the forward piece, and the forward edge of the rear piece -- do indeed line up). What's probably throwing you off is something to do with the geometry -- in particular the belly tube is more like a 3/4 round than 1/2 round.
ReplyDeleteHi Naoto,
DeleteYou might be right, but it looked like they copied and pasted the fairing piece then moved the center line marking to the other side. I see too many confusing drawings in the vague Estes instructions now.
As for the pieces being short, perhaps it might be prudent to cut them a bit long (just in case), then trim down as required. The problem you noted about the tube marking guides would point to possibly having problems with the other printed sheets.
ReplyDeleteHi Naoto,
DeleteI try to build the kits as the average Joe would first, using the pieces supplied in the kit. The marking guides were on the instructions sheet and the fairing pieces on separate, slick card stock. Both were off by about 1/16".
I don't know why Estes can't get the tube marking guides right. They used to be good in the 1970s.
There are some potential "gotchas" when you're authoring the documents as well as when you're printing. Some of this comes about due to some variance in the size of the non-printable margins on a given printer. You have to author the document and take to make sure you're not trying to print into those areas -- for *any* device to which you plan to send the output. You also need to *NOT* select auto-resize or "fit to page" option when printing.
DeleteIf you're printing the materials in-house, then it's probably easier to control -- but if it's done outside, you're likely to have problems.
If you're dealing with an agent overseas, yet another "gotcha" is different paper standards -- in the USA it would be letter size at 8.5" x 11" letter size, but in Europe and Asia then you'd be dealing with A4 (about 8.27" × 11.69").
I believe you recently ran into a problem with some scans from the JimZ site. I too have run into problems with scanned images, as they more often than not print too big or too small depending on the format used. If the scan included a measurement reference (which could be as simple as a square that's an inch in size), making sure the printout is the right size is *much* easier.
DeleteOf course, there's a potential "gotcha" that could be a problem at the authoring end. If the person scans an image, then imports the scan into another application (e.g. Corel) *then* adds the 1-inch square reference, it's ends up being sort of pointless unless the person made sure that the imported scan came in as the right size.