Automation is a great way of increasing accuracy and efficiency when making parts.
Many of the steps of making Squirrel kits use expensive and complex equipment.
But sometimes just using your head is all it takes.
Originally I had planned on a system that would pull the elastic out of a box and snip it at regular intervals (and having the elastics fall into another box). That sounded like a fun and reasonably challenging project. I expected to use an arduino microcontroller and some sensors to control the elastic length and alarm when it runs out and finishes a batch.
With the simple method below the elastics are easier to handle because all of them are in a bunch when they come off the template.
Plus this machine needed very little material to make.
Hello,
Congratulations for your useful site, it helped me spend some quality time with my son while building our airplanes. They fly well but very short distances, our problem seems to be the rubber band, we didn’t find a long one so we attached 3 or 4. We turn the propeller about 200 turns but it seems to lose power very quickly, when we pick up the airplane from the floor the propeller is still turning but very slowly. As far as I can see the propeller turns fast for 3 or 4 seconds and then it turns slowly which cannot keep the airplane flying. Unfortunately we live in Belgium and it’s not easy to find the proper elastics here, I wonder if you have any advice for me.
Thank you,
Miguel.
Thank you,
Miguel
The elastic isn’t the same as what you buy at a business store. Perhaps I can send you some.