AH-6Z Littlebird Night-Ops build project

[wgt40w]

Got it - it's to hold up the meat mincer !

[Zeeflyboy]

Indeed!

So, What have I learned about 5 blade heads today? that they are a pain in the butt! You have to do everything 5 damn times lol.

Anyway, few shots of the head. I have to say I'm pretty happy with it thus far - quality seems pretty good, especially considering the price point (300 euros may not sound cheap, but for a big 5 blade head like this it's actually a positive bargain) and there is only one things that really niggles me.... they used normal screws for the retaining bolts that are placed under shear load from the blades trying to fly off.. From an engineering standpoint they really should be shouldered.... easy enough to fix though I guess when I feel so inclined.


The parts arranged:





Each blade grip arm is properly fitted out with two radial bearings and a thrust bearing at the end. Very smooth bearings!





Swash:





No namby pamby plastic links on this head!







retaining bolts in place:





And finished - what a gorgeous lump of engineering!







And Here are my battery plates being cut out by my CNC machine... the G10 is much easier and less messy than CF to cut lol.

[Zeeflyboy]

we're not big eaters ;)

very observant lol



So, here's my latest creation... the Naza Anti-Vibration Mount or AVM for short - sounds professional dunnit ;)

Pieces freshly cut on the CNC




Added some 25mm nylon standoffs and some nylon m3 screws:




and assembled using some Omicron anti vibration gel on both the underside of the Naza and between the top of the Naza and the cross brace. This results in a tasty looking Naza-jelly sandwich. They only thing I can't do here is countersink the holes as I don't have a countersink bit - that'll have to wait till I get back after christmas, but once done the screws will be flush with the panels.

[Zeeflyboy]

Just whipped up a set of panels for the mounting arms. I'm seriously chuffed with my CNC machine now - they fit absolutely perfectly... not even the slightest gap anywhere. Ran out of tiny screws though - need to order some more!


So the machine doing it's thaaaang:




Top panel, the hole in the middle is for the ammo belt for the guns and the small tab is for the locking mechanism you saw in a previous post:




Bottom panel (minus some screws!)... here you can see the inboard weapon mount stanchion too




And the outer section of the arm:

[g.collins]

Parts look great, i'm glade your having fun with the CNC.
:) G

[Zeeflyboy]

It's brilliant mate, very happy with it.

[Big_Red]

I really cant wait to see this in action, its the best project ive seen going for a long time.

Agreed, this thread is stunning, sir, you are a master craftsmen.

J.

[Zeeflyboy]

Haha, hardly! Im a junior aspiring craftsman... most of this stuff I'm learning as I go. Thanks though lol.

Here's a couple more bit's from the mill

These little things are for mounting those fibreglass spars to which the weapon's arms are mounted. They will bolt onto the underside of the floor panel.







and here's my load spreading base plate that will hopefully help to strengthen everything up and help survive a few less than optimal landings!

[Zeeflyboy]

And one last update for a little while..

using my CNC machine in manual mode, it's quite good for just getting very nice straight cuts. I needed some corner brackets to mount the battery trays on the side of the heli frames, but I couldn't find anything ready made that fitted what I want. Instead I ordered some 50mmx50mmx3mm corner section of T6061 aluminium and cut some brackets myself...

Here's the machine just cutting straight lines




and here you can see how I'll have 3 brackets per side and how they hold the battery tray. These then mount to the side of the heli frame... still a bit of drilling and tapping to do here.






HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

[wgt40w]

Trust you used the turkey to practice some engraving !!

[Zeeflyboy]

lol, no... just attacked it with a chainsaw

So hope everyone had a good christmas, I'm back to work again now lol. Here's my Hellfire launcher... you can see the rails where the missiles mount





And here with the whole mounting arm for reference

[Zeeflyboy]

And here's a little work on the battery mounts...

So here I've drilled out my aluminium brackets and I'm finally putting to use a tap and die set that I bought many moons ago - tapping out the two bottom holes with m3 thread.




so then we end up with this, battery plate and brackets together:




And here's to give an idea of how it will mount to the helicopter:




The brackets on either side of the frame will be linked by a tapped aluminium cross brace (same as the other frame braces) so that the weight of the batteries doesn't pull directly on the frame. I'm also now considering cutting my own replacement side frames out of G10... it'll weigh a little more than the CF but the advantage is that I can change the shape to shorten the nose and give more cockpit space, plus cut holes and whatnot exactly where I want them... it would also of course have the advantage of removing a huge amount of carbon fibre which is, as we know, not great for radio signals.

Undecided on that though for now... I'm mulling it over. I can of course also modify the stock frame to shorten the nose.

On top of that, a chap on another forum has graciously sent me his unused gear and pinions... This gear requires use of a non standard hub so I ordered a Lynx universal Hub and it fits perfectly... The pictures don't convey it perhaps but the comparison between the KDE gear and align auto-rotation gear compared to the HK600 stock gears is just ridiculous. So much more precise and true running, the feel of the quality is orders of magnitude higher. Should really help cut down on vibrations so thanks a lot chap!







old vs new







Oh and I just ordered the nice scale 4 blade tail I posted a little while back.. should arrive soon. Just need blades, a few bits to finish installing the servos and then the airframe is very close to getting airborne for some testing.

[Zeeflyboy]

And to accompany the Hellfires on one side, I've devised this Quad rocket pod for the other side...

This will have fibreglass side panels in the same way that the mounting arms do, and inside will run four 22mm(OD) x 20mm(ID) x 146mm aluminium tubes. the whole unit is 55 x 55 x 150mm in size. The back is removable and has space for a board to hold 4 igniters, and the tubes will be slotted at the back to allow the igniters into the tube.... The idea being that I can make small black powder "charges" to load inside the tubes... when they ignite, should get a very nice swoosh, flash and smoke rocket style effect. That or my heli blows up.






Rear portion, you can see the removable rear cap, mount point for the igniter board and the 4 holes to allow wires through to it.

[Zeeflyboy]

And happy new year everyone!

So my first post of 2013 - given the slight hangover, noise is best avoided so I just did a bit more modelling work... I've been playing with the Hellfires and this is how they are looking:

Now these aren't actually going to be entirely 3D printed... The rail and the nose will be, but the body will just be a 140mm long, 22mm wide tube, and the fins will be cut on my CNC. Anyway, I just wanted to get a feel for how they would look on the arm and having seen them I think they look pretty mean lol

[Zeeflyboy]

So, look what postie just delivered!

beauuutiful... a perfect match for the head. I'm actually very impressed with this - the quality feels good and all the actions are very smooth and slop free with bearings in all the right places where often you see bushings instead... They also cleverly designed it so that you can switch the pitch lever arm to either side to facilitate either a left or right handed tail, and even included a spare pitch lever arm in the box.






The only problem - I now have no where to mount the tail fin as this unit doesn't have the normal fin mounting holes.... shapeways to the rescue!

I quickly designed this little bracket to attach the tail fin to instead: