spaceman

Hello everybody, well then let's get to the tricky Double-angle holders, on which the Worm Gears are mounted, which I've cut with the Chisel cutter from my prepared H Profile to 1,7 mm length. However, since the shape of the sides of the angle is not an isosceles triangle, as can be seen in this image, Source: NASA (STS-125) I first had to attach these unequal slants to both sides of the tiny one, which was quite difficult because one can hardly fix the angle for it, but I managed to do this to some extent with the cutter and car

Hello everybody, meanwhile I've been thinking about how I could scratch the tiny Worm Gear and the Folding Bellows as well as the encased Coupling Rod, sitting on top of it. For clarity, this time I've left out the confusing scaling of dimensions and just given the final dimensions of the components, making it easier to see the details to scratch. Source: NASA (STS-132) Then I looked around for suitable materials and found some in my inventory, including a suitable black insulating tube Ø 1,4 mm for the slightly thicker lower area of the bel

Hello everybody, a far trickier component is this pivoted Double angle holder onto which the Worm gear is mounted, which functions as the drive component of the Screw Jack which provides the vertical movement of the trapezoidal spindle. Source: NASA (STS-135) Tricky therefore, because this double angle is very small, as one can imagine from its dimensions (1,7mm x 1,5mm x 1,0mm) in this image. Source: NASA (STS-125) Therefore it would be a clever solution if there was a suitable Styrene profile that would fall within this rang

Hi Kirk, it can't be due to the chamfer on the cutter blade, as I deliberately use a Chisel cutter (Martor) whose blade only has a chamfer on one side, and which can therefore be ideally placed at the ruler edge with its flat side when cutting. But even here it is important to guide the chisel cutter as vertically as possible, because the slightest skewing would result in a faulty cut again. But it's good that you reminded me of my Mitre Cutter (RP TOOLZ), which I actually only use for larger quantities, like back then for the felt like 1.000 pins of the Crawler chains

OMG Pete, I feel for you, I would be frustrated too and I would go through the roof.

Hi Kirk, definitely, these are my standard methods meanwhile. My compliments, you have a good sense of proportion too, which is nearly the same measure what I also would read off. And so to the background of my estimation question. For the frame struts of the Screw Jacks I will use Evergreen Strips (0,25 mm x 0,5 mm). Since the frame is only 2 mm wide, the gap is 1,5 mm, which is why I need a total of 8 snippets of this length. Therefore I initially set the steel rulers exactly to 1,5 mm, but I was surprised that the

Hello everybody, speaking about measurements with a steel ruler vs a digital caliper. Only a short question, especially for my friend Kirk. What do you think, how long will the snippets be that I can cut with this ruler setting using my cutting method with the steel rulers?

Thanks Kirk for your joky comment, you'll laugh, but that's exactly what I'm doing every day, which is why I'll show you my plastic ruler and my digital caliper. But that shows me that you're not such a loopy scratch builder like me. Since I measure the distances on the monitor, the plastic ruler is the much simpler, better and, above all, faster tool, with which I can measure with an accuracy of up to 0,5 mm without any problems, which is completely sufficient for the selected photo enlargement. OMG, that's why I wouldn't drea

Hello everybody, and I tackled that right away, which resulted in the following dimensions. Source: NASA (STS-135) In order to keep track of it myself, I marked the determined heights and widths in color, especially since they also were determined by using different reference dimensions (blue). As reference dimensions I've used the dimensions of the Wall braces of the door actuators, which are identical to those of the Screw jacks. But that's still not all the dimensions I need. A few widths from a front view of the screw jack

Hello everybody, and now the Door actuator followed for the other canister side using the same knitting pattern. With this the Port Side now also has its door drive. Next up are the bottom linkages of the Door actuators on which the Screw Jacks are mounted. Source: NASA (STS-135) They are similar to the adjacent Access Platforms in terms of the structure of the mount, but are much narrower and therefore a bit more complicated, as one can see on this section at higher magnification,

Hi Pete and welcome in 2023 with all good wishes! OMG, you're going off like a fire brigade, and then such a mishap with these damn decals ... Cheer up brother and bite through, you'll think of something to solve the problem!

Hello everybody in 2023, I hope you all slipped in well and are in good spirits. I also want to get off to a flying start and show how I assembled the Door drive, which consists of limply 20 individual parts if I counted correctly. Before assembling both frames, however, the Pneumatic unit had to be glued to the rear Gear part (1) of the upper frame, for which I had to come up with a special holding device again, so that the fragile assemblies do not break down. And for this, only a magnetic holder was possible, for which the free end of the frame behind the g

Hello everybody in the old year, and so let's go right ahead with the midgets of the Pneumatic Unit. For the Housings (9) I've sanded two Styrene blocks (0,7 mm x 1,3 mm x 1,6 mm), and for the dome-shaped Cover (4) I did use a rod (Ø 1 mm x 1 mm) painted gray. The small plugs were glued on in the usual way by using the proven fixation between the steel rulers. The tiny Screw (8) on the Bevel Gearbox (2) I've hinted with a Fineliner (0,05 mm). Now the Housings (9) of the Pneumatic

Hello everybody, I hope you tolerated all the culinary delights well and were happy about the presents. Now that the holidays are over, I want to get back to the crafting table and carry on a little further to finally finish these tricky Door drives. In the meantime, I've also gotten a little more clarity about the possible function of this special drive and transmission technology, what is always part of it for me. Doing it I found out that my Coupler (2) is a Bevel Gearbox, through which the shafts in the horizontal pipes (6) are driven, w

Hello friends, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Hello everybody, and with this I'll come now to the gluing of the Gear box (1) in the narrow space behind the Coupler (2) and the cross brace, which I've been puzzling my head over for a long time broken how best to do it, among other things about how I can hold and act on the fragile frame in the most gentle way, because there is not much space for safe access. To do this, I first grabbed the frame with the tweezers directly behind the cross brace, have fixed the tweezers in this position with a clamp, and parked in such a way that the gearb

Thanks my friend for sharing your experience in hunting these damned midgets, one never stops learning. BTW, in the next post I'll go into my trick of applying tiny amounts of glue to those tiny parts. All you need is only a small tool from medical technology, therefore stay tuned.

Thanks Mike for your nice words and your sympathy regarding these crazy wayward little monsters ... I wish you and Patricia also a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Thanks Pete for your nice comment. A firm grip is relative and depends on the size of the midgets and the quality of your tweezers, e.g. like this one, just still sufficient for holding an Evergreen Strip (0,25 mm x 0,5 mm), And for taking those ultra close-up photos I don't need a Microscope but only my good old Digicam Panasonic DMC-FX 30 with MEGA O.I.S./28 mm WIDE and self-timer. Thank you very much, Pete, for your best wishes for Christmas and a hopefully better and and peaceful 2023 for all of us!

Hello friends, Game over at the Football World Cup and congratulations to the new world champion Argentina and to Lionel Messi as the best player of the tournament, who finally crowned his career - credit where credit is due! And with that, back to normality again and with renewed enthusiasm back to my crafting table with the Payload Canister. Well, the smaller the parts become, the more difficult the entire handling during assembly and especially when gluing them. For a better idea of the Door Actuator Pneumatic Drive, I tried to make a 1:1

Hi Pete, what an impressive collection! Good to know, that nobody can take these memories away from you ... Keeping the legacy alive!

Hello everybody, before I get to the details of the Door Actuator Pneumatic Drive which sit in and on the frame box, I first have glued the four short support struts onto the bottom frame of the second box. Doing it, picking up and securely holding these 2 mm long tiny strips is a special exercise that requires a lot of patience and two steady hands, since the tip of the tweezers just barely fits over them. And then you have to dip the tiny strip carefully into the blob of glue and place it correctly as soon as possible, which is why the fram

This result is impressive, Pete! You would also be an excellent restorer ...

Thanks Kirk for your nice words, so far the frame box still looks pretty boring, but with the itsy-bitsy pneumatic drive details the box will come to life. Stay tuned and you will see.