Something else

Well, that didn’t work….  

I made time last night to cut the ribs for this project.  They came out pretty good.







You can see that the rib pairs are perfectly matched without a lick of sanding.  I couldn’t do that by hand without a lot of slow and careful sanding.






Then I tried to make my jig ribs.  The ribs in my .svg file are dashed along the rib outline, as you can see above.  That way, I can just pop out the L.E., T.E., and spar cutouts and slide the sticks through the holes to jig up the wing while I build.  Then, once the wing is complete, I just cut along the dashed line and the wing is free and in perfect alignment.  But, even though my .svg file has dashed lines around the rib outlines, the Cricut machine cut them as solid lines:





Confusing, but “Oh, well”.  No biggie.  I’ll just tape the ribs in place in the jig.  That should hold them while I build the wing, and then I can just peel away the tape when I’m done.  I’ll have to do some more experimentation to get the dashed lines to cut like I want.

The Perplexed Mark

Here's the video of the wing ribs being cut.  The ribs range in size from 5.25 inches to 14 inches long.





The Cinematographer Mark

Looks like you bought got this thing wiped to do what you want , is that the same machine ? with upgrades ?

getback wrote:Looks like you bought got this thing wiped to do what you want , is that the same machine ? with upgrades ?

Standard Cricut Maker machine, just as it came out of the box from Hobby Lobby.  I have a couple of experiments on how to try and make the machine cut 1/8" balsa, it's rated for 3/32" max, but that's for another day.

The Box Stock Mark

Mark, that's most impressive how it can cut circles across grain as it does. What is actually holding the parts in place as they're being cut? I see you had to ease the parts off of the mat.

Ken, the mat that the balsa is on has a sticky surface. There are different levels of stickiness. The purple mats are the "stickiest" mats you can get for the Cricut machines, and that's what we need for doing balsa.

The Wicket Mark

Mark, my next question is how do you plot the pieces on the sheet. In other words, is it possible to orientate grain direction?