Airfix 1/12 Bentley Blower

[Bugatti Fan]

Those 3D CAD drawings of the engine interior parts look good Francois. It will be interesting to see them made before they go into your model.

The fuel tank looks really good with the real mesh used on it and the bracketry you made for it. I like the way that you reworked the rear lamps for the model to fit proper lenses.

The circle cutting tool that you used for the lenses looks really interesting. Who makes it, and where can one be bought from?

I have an Olfa cutter but it is useless for this sort of circle cutting as it works like a compass where a point has to go into the middle of the work.

Really impressed with the wing nuts, Did you draw them up yourself and print them, or does someone else design and make them for sale. They look really useful for many other models besides the Bentley.

[François]

Thank you Bugatti fan. The cutter comes from Amazon and the wingnut, same as most 3d printed parts I but in my models are designed by myself. I get them printed at my local hobby shop for what I concider to be a ridiculously low price. I basically pay for the material.

[absmiami]

Holy cow - you have a local hobby shop ?  That prints your files ??  

[François]

Well actually,  one of the employee has a printer and does small jobs for clients. Quite convenient. 

[Bugatti Fan]

Francois, thank you for coming back with information about the circle cutter from Amazon. I could see on the box label it is made by Hobby Tool. They probably have a website with other tools that might be interesting too!

I sort of guessed that you probably drew up the wing nuts and had them made. Another item that I saw on the pictures of the full size Bentley fuel tank details was the close up of one of the nuts that are castle shaped where a split pin is fitted. I would imagine that they would be good to be be drawn up in 3D too.I

I have a fairly old 3D program on an old laptop running XP named Pro Desktop that was used by schools. So I might ask if you might allow me to use your STL file so I could get some made?

Kind regards  Noel

[absmiami]

Castle nuts ?

actually they are buyable …

2 makers - although one of them is Russian - Master Club - and their trade has been limited/and/or forbidden  for the past year - and there is a second maker - Decalcas ? - not sure - check Spot Model …

[François]

No problem Noel, but I must warn you, the wings are extremely fragile.  I'll modify the part a little bit first by making the wings à little bit thicker. They represent a 1/4dia nut ar 1/12 scale, is that ok?

[David G.]

On 6/12/2023 at 5:56 AM, François said:

David, if you haven't seen my post on the Alfa I did, go check it out. You'll see it is quite possible to do?

http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/181906-italeri-112-alfa-romeo-8c/

Thanks for the link François, it is a true pleasure to see it all in action.

Impressive work Sir. Most impressive.

David G.

[François]

I started work on the rear leaf springs today. I've seen a few different version of how it was done back then, some were left bare (you could see the separate leafs), some were wrapped with a cloth of some sort and some were wrapped with a rope. I had to search thru all my ref car pictures but I eventually found a picture that shows a very small portion of the front leafs wrapped with a rope. Althougt the picture in question is of a green car (my ref is black), being they were all built pretty much at the same time I opted for a rope wrap. 

Ref car

What Airfix gives, you can see that they moulded a rop wrap which is not too bad but the ubolts are really bad.

my first try, all I had was a red nylon thread, l'll have to get a thread in a beige/natural color and perhaps in a smaller diameter. I also made a proper ubolt. This is just a mockup, but at least now I know what to do.

[Bugatti Fan]

Thanks for coming back about the wing nuts Francois. I will get back to you on a PM as soon as I can figure out how to get my old XP ProDesktop program to run on Windows 10.

Andrew. Thanks for the leads about sourcing castle nuts.

 

[François]

I'm done with the ubolts and nut on the leaf springs.  Alot of bending,  cutting and fitting but I think it should look alot better. I'm going thru my printed nuts and bolts too fast and they're expensive to get. I'll draw them up myself and have them printed locally at a fraction of the price of buying having them shipped from germany.

It's off to print and after that, thread installation, that should be fun!

[François]

Wrapping on one leaf spring is done.  I'm very happy with the result. 

Also, I received a Ender 3 filament printer today as a father's day gift.  It's used and not worth much but it was a gift so I want to try my best to make it work. It's very easy to use but so far the results are a bit sketchy. 

Anyone Know how to properly set up this printer?

 

[Bugatti Fan]

The spring upgrades look really good Francois. Detailing the Ubolts and wrapping proper binding on the springs makes all the difference.

I saw on Nick's Britmodeller threads that you are now together sharing cad information on projects that can only be good.

On there you describe yourself as the 'Guy from Quebec.' A few years back I was on a cruise along the Eastern seaboard from Boston that eventually went upriver to Quebec City. It was very impressive from what I could see in the short time I visited it.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Bugatti Fan

[François]

So, the fuel tank fabrication is done it's pain painted, and ready for final assy.

all 4 leaf springs are ubolted painted and rope wrapped. 

 

I've been testing the 3d printer a lot and althought it's not precise enough for certain parts (like the internal engine parts) it's good for less complex and detailled design.  So I decided to greatly improve Airfix poor excuse for brakes. When I started this build,  my intention was to create all brake linkage and possibly have it move a bit like on the Alfa. But I'm going a few step further and 3d print new brake shoes,  brake shoe mounting plate (with added details) shoe actuating cam, rod, lever and mounting bracket.  Now seeing how it's going since I started printing these parts,  I'm pretty confident that not only will the brake linkage move, the brake should actually work. Well, at least that the plan. And being the mecanical nerd that I am, I also decided to drive the rear wheel from the engine. At one point,  this kit had an electric motor somewhere so the drive shaft and certain other parts where moulded with square ends or square sockets, depending.  This will permit me to transmit from the front of the blower all the way to the differentiel casing. But it's an empty differentiel casing you say, well yes it is  but I'm adding 2 gears to correct that. It won't be a real differentiel per say but still, the rear wheel will turn. Now,  hiw that for geeky! Here are a few pictures of this endavour. 

3d cad model

 

Airfix brake shoe representation

and mine(not final parts)

My shoe plate and actuating arm bracket

the differentiel parts

That's it for now. 

[cifenet]

Super impressive! 

I like how you are focused to reproduce things one by one carefully!  And the results are definitely worth the effort here!  Nice going so far.

[jaymcminn]

I've seen a few of these built and have one I've been tinkering with for years. That's the best I've ever seen that fuel tank assembly done. Great job on wrapping the springs too!

[François]

I've read a bit on the different plastics normaly used with a filament printer. There seems to be 2 popular types, PVA (or polyvinyl) and ABS (also know as styrene). I've been using PVA since it what I got with the printer.  It print ok but is very hard to sand and it's also hard to gloss. ABS on the other hand, being styrene,  is much easier to sand. Styrene is what our plastic models are made of so I figure that any part printed with ABS should be easy to glue using any model glue. And, as a bonus, ABS can be glossed using acetone. So I've ordered myself a roll of ABS gray filament.  I guess I'll be reprinting all the rear brake parts again. Oh well, live and learn !!

The result is still nice with the PVA, I'm very curious to see if it will be any better with the ABS. 

Edited June 23, 2023 by François

[mrm]

Holly Molly! That fuel tank is a model by itself. I truly enjoy your work and will definitely follow. 

[Bugatti Fan]

Interesting further developments on the brakes.

[François]

I received my ABS filament coil for the printer. It's alot harder to use then the PLA but the results are pretty good and, being styrene, it's easy to trim and sand. I redid some rear brake parts and althought it's far from being finished, we can already see that the brakes work. 

 

I also started to study the front brakes mecanism. There are a lot of pivot shafts with levers mounted on them. It's really hard to find good pictures of the different components. I did find a drawings that has some good info. What is not there, I'll need to improvise. 

Hers is the old drawing of brake pivot shafts and levers configuration. 

First print test of cross member with pivot shaft housings.  

it's not bad but the wall is too thin. 

I'm slowly advancing the cad model of the full brake system. Bentley sure loved pivots and levers!!

[beeRS]

Wow. The detail level is insane. Keep up the amazing work. 

[François]

The rear axel is assembled and brake shoes are working better with the new cam design. 

Now, I'm toying with the idea of printing new finned drums with proper spinner hubs. 

Here is my firts test for the hub

The brake system's cad model is advancing nicely.  I added the brake pedal. Unfortunately, I tried printing à few levers but they're too small for à filament printer,  l'll have them resin printed. 

 

Edited June 29, 2023 by François

[Straightliner59]

Fabulous work, Francois! The brakes are beautiful!

[David G.]

Astounding work François! The springs and brakes are amazing.

David G.

[Pierre Rivard]

Salut Francois, your work is so inspiring. Way beyond my ability level but still I follow what you do with great interest. Scale modeling classes free!