DarkAero

[pylon500]

Have just stumbled across this project, and it is eye-opening, although to my view, not altogether in a positive note.

While I admit that, yes it will fly and it will be fast, when you look behind the hype and the droolable goodies, there are some questionable 'advances' being utilised in the design and manufacture of this project.

I've only watched four or five of the videos, but each one set off the odd alarm bell, more in the cost and engineering concepts, rather than the build quality or production rate, which are inspiring.

Have a look through the youtube channel; 

https://www.youtube.com/c/DarkAeroInc/videos

The one that stuck in my mind initially was the CNC'd nose leg, which gave me 'engineering overkill' vibes to the max, for something that was still only a simple unit and possibly subject to failure (think; the joining lugs cracking off), despite the beautiful workmanship.

Another was the home made carbon/honeycomb board, which has great strength in bending resistance, which is then used to make ribs and stringers, that take shear loads.

.

I was watching these a 1:00am this morning and must now get back to my own projects, but was just interested to hear other's thoughts...

[old man emu]

They certainly have taken a lot of effort to document the build. And they are really looking into the gnat's nuts of it.

 

I liked this video 

 

[spacesailor]

Very interesting,

Never thought about the weight difference in frg aircraft parts  ( inciuding carbon in frg ) 

.

Once saw a frg  life boat from the NZ Wahine that was  made like straw, quite thick but very lite in weight.

Not much resin inside the skins, just loose long, chopped strand mat, the resin must have been drained out.

spacesailor

[Yenn]

I only looked at the video about  gulleting pipe fittings. Made me wonder why use carbon and then gleu carbon tubes together. There must be stronger jointing methods than that.

[old man emu]

These are the variations in weight he is talking about

 

What common thing can you use to get an idea of these differences? A spoonful of sugar, not only helps the medicine go down, it weighs 4.8 grams.

 

He raises an interesting point for discussion. In theory one would think that making parts they way these people did would produce identical products, but when practice sticks its grubby finger into the pie perfect repeatability goes out the door. Unfortunately there are only two of each component, which makes useful statistical analysis impossible. If there were twenty or more of each component to add to the data then some practical use could be made of the analysis.

 

These people are being influenced by the accuracy they are getting from CNC and 3D-printing. If I could make several different components and come as close to identical as they have, I'd be happy.