Originally Posted by
pilotdude57
You can make a mold faster than a 3D printer? I don't think that would be true even if the 3D printer takes two or three hours to print it. Besides, much less work for me and in the time the 3D printer is working I can be doing something else. Touche'. As far as the "manuals" go, most of what I am doing is DUPLICATING kits that have been long out of production, i.e. the Sterling kits and Royal kits, where the construction photos and plans and instructions already exist, and if I enlarge the airplane parts then the plans would be enlarged too. That's what I need the plotter for, so I don't have to pay FedEx office to do it for me. For example, some of the kits would be three or four times enlargements of the Guillows laser-cut kits, where I am aware that I would have to beef up the construction (more than normal expansion of the stringers and wing ribs, for example, to withstand the higher flight loads of the larger airplane), so everything is already done, and Guillows doesn't care, as it is not competing with their smaller kits, and may even generate more sales of their smaller kits with advertising, as some of my customers may not even be aware of the Guillows kits, which they would then end up buying for their kids. How long ago did you pay the 20K for a used laser cutter. As with all other technologies, the initial offerings are much more expensive, and the laser cutters nowadays are much less expensive than they used to be, with much more competition. Check out the Full Spectrum Laser from Colorado. Prices are not bad unless you get all kinds of options that are not necessary. Some of the machines from China are much less expensive, but you have to wait for them. They also have cooling systems and fume evacuation systems included, and methods to hold down the material.
Unless you are talking about million dollar 3d machines, most machines I have seen take much longer than 3 hours to make a plug for a 60" wingspan airplane. That doesn't include the hand finish time. If such printers were available inexpensively and were reliable, we would have them. To me, it looks like that technology will be cost effective for hobby use in about 5 years. Since I don't know what kind of printer your library has I can't make that determination. What printer does your library have?
Have you seen the instructions for Pica and Guillows kits? If you copy them and put them with your kits, not only will you have to do more technical support than you can handle, but you will probably have a lawsuit from both Guillows and Great Planes. You would spend more time on the phone giving technical support than you would making kits. We have photo illustrated manuals in our kits that average 30-40 pages and we spend 1-2 hours of technical support for almost every kit and ARF we sell.
I think you will find that the $7000.00 laser is not near powerful enough to cut the type of kits you are looking at, unless you don't plan on putting any ply in your kits or cutting the ply by hand. A 60 watt laser will cut approx. 1-3 .60 size mono wing kits per hour, depending on the amount of parts and lightning holes. It takes approximately 1.5 hours to cut one of our simpler 60 size kits with a 60 watt laser using balsa and baltic birch. 1/8" aircraft grade could be cut at 1.5% speed on that laser and if I remember correctly, Pica kits that size use aircraft ply.
Unless you are growing balsa trees in your backyard, you will still need to come up with $10,000.00 for the materials that you will need to make the reward kits. If you have that money already, why not just put it toward the laser cutter and start taking pre-orders for kits? Adrian Page probably has inventory from his past business already. The only thing he needed was the cutter, while you need absolutely everything to go into full on kit production.
I would love to have a Pica T-28 to replace the one I lost a couple years ago, but so far, I can see that this venture just doesn't have the proper planning or funding to succeed.