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Thursday, April 9, 2020

Estes MRN Orbital Transport Laboratory Build, Part 3, Shroud & Nozzle Draw

Why bother re-drawing printed plans?
I do appreciate all the plans stored at the JimZ's and oldrocketplans.com website. But after those initial scans, your download and a "usable" home print you can't count on the shrouds to fit your body tubes.
I also wanted clean shroud prints without the words "ENGINE MOUNT CAP" and "ENGINE NOZZLE" printed on them. Printed card stock wording can sometimes be seen under finished paint!

I went to payloadbay.com, then to "tools".
The outside edge of the engine mount cap shroud sits about 1/8" inside the BT-60 diameter.
The numbers were punched in and the shrouds printed.
1" reference marks were drawn and the print scanned so it could be dropped into Corel Draw.

Extras were added so I can make nested, double shrouds.

If you are a Patreon supporter, email me at: oddlrockets@bellsouth.net and request the Ithe Orbital Transport Laboratory PDF.

2 comments:

  1. This is a very important tip because over the years the original image was transferred to different media (artboard to negative to printing plate to paper to digital scanner) and each generation adds its own slight distortion to the point where the end result is unusable. Therefore, it is better to just remake the shrouds to your liking.

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    1. Indeed. I do recall running into situation where a photocopy machine was creating a distorted copy. Across the short edge of the paper the copy was fine, but along the long edge, the distances were compressed at one end and stretched on the other end.

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