robbur, very nice work so far. I’ve attempted such an effort before, but stalled. Looks very good modeling. Highly recommend Witold’s book on aitplane modeling…very solid and detailed.
clock, nice to see you again. I hadn’t been posting much on BA lately. Cheers! (P.S. I am downloading your glass material!).
Thanks for the kind comments, I think that when you are this far into a model it is more about persistence as the general layout and overall look of the model is settled and it’s just adding more and more detail on the roughed out blocks that are used to scale and position the components.
I have browsed over Witold’s thread, his work and guidance on modelling aeroplanes is extremely detailed and informative. I will look closer at the thread when I return to detailing the aeroplanes skin. For now though it is still detailing parts of the Merlin engine.
Looking good, do you have any plans for engine internals and a full rig for the engine?
Cheers, Clock.
Hi Clock, the Spitfire is a piece for my portfolio as I hope to be picking up the odd technical illustration commission over the coming months. I have produced quite a few illustrations for previous employers and the solid fuel/chimney industry guidance I used to write, even though it wasn’t what I was employed for.
At the moment I am setting up a couple of websites to demonstrate what I can do and thought I would use the spitfire to show I can handle larger projects. My initial focus will be on trying to get work on installation or training manuals so am concentrating on still images. But who knows what the future holds. I have written a number of training presentations and used Blender to fill them with animations, so if I get time over the coming months I might add an animated cutaway of the engine.
Cheers
Rob
There is still a lot to do on the merlin engine, especially around the gear casing that houses the camshaft drives and the components that sit between the engine block and super charger. From this angle the missing parts aren’t shown, so here’s an update of progress with the engine.
It’s coming on well, but did they really use square head bolts to hold that casing on the front? If they did that’s fine, but it sure looks weird.
There is an add on that does nuts and bolts, I will find a link when I am next at home.
Cheers, Clock.
@ Gumboots: as weird as it sounds, around the top of the front casting they did use square headed coach bolts, which meant you only needed one spanner for the hex nut on the other end, as the square was held by a flat on the casting. Further around and towards the bottom of that casting they used studs and hex nuts, I just haven’t got round to adding that level of detail yet, and yes it does look a little weird with the square heads, they look more suited to an old Victorian steam train than a high performance V12.
@ Clockmender - The bolt factory is now standard with Blender and in User Preferences >> Add Mesh
This was high performance cause of the better design of the Turbo charger
and good enough it was used on the P-51 and that was probably one of the best WWII fighter
only problem with merlin I think was that it could overheat at low speed
so had to start engine and take off fast
It was an impressive design to beat all the other radial engines
and very reliable I mean average mean life was over 400 Hours
compare to radial which where around 100/ 150 Hours at best
some of the first B-17 engine had a life of around 25 hours
and it did improve over time to around 100 hours I think
but not very reliable and overheating.
and all that was done with hand drawings blueprint
no PC or blender LOL
happy bl
Fair enough. That makes a lot of sense. 
It reminded me of some earlier British engineering, which was not so convenient for the mechanics. I was reading about the restoration of an 1838 locomotive (the ex-LMR “Lion”). The bolts and nuts on it were hand made, and they found that each bolt head and each nut could require up to three different spanners, depending on which flats you were using at the time. 
Fortunately, just after that loco was built, Joseph Whitworth came up with the system to standardise threads with “British Standard Whitworth” so we no longer make individual nuts and bolts that don’t fit anything other than the original nut/bolt it was fitted to.
There’s a place I never see mentioned. A goldmine of info on WWII military aircraft. Aces High (the most difficult and nerve-racking sim in the world) has some very knowledgeable people active in the forums.
You probably have to register to post. The forums are a bit wild but the aircraft spec discussions are usually pretty good. Trash-talking gamers can’t compete with hard-core history buffs. Here’s the Aircraft and Vehicles discussion forum http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/board,17.0.html
If I were looking for ref and info about the Spit that’s where I would go. Specs, dates, variants, performance, decals, manuals, Janes, links, etc. Some of these folks could and would probably go look at one if you stumped them with a question.
-LP
@ LarryPhillips - thanks for the links they are excellent resources, I will definitely be scouring that forum when I need to get the next batch of references and advice. I did look at the Aero Legends Spitfire cockpit, it is exactly what I was looking for and like you spent far too much time last night looking at the details and information, before I was called away. I haven’t played on a flight sim for about 20 years, but looking at some of the players video’s they have certainly improved since then.
Many thanks
Rob
Sorry I clean up my posts too much when I go off on a tangent like that. Here’s the proper link to that cockpit. You can put it in true fullscreen mode via this one http://aerolegends.co.uk/spitfire/spitfire-cockpit
The thanks goes to you. The 608 Bearing Tutorial is one of the best. It’s been a valuable gift to the community.
-Larry
Here’s a few more links.
This is my all-time favorite Spitfire video. Someone yells a profanity so be careful who’s in the room with you.
Wow. I didn’t know it was a Mk IX. I found its website.
http://www.mh434.com/
Here’s some wing info.
http://spitfiresite.com/2010/04/concise-guide-to-spitfire-wing-types.html
You’ve probably seen these.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Spitfire_(early_Merlin-powered_variants)
You’ll be a Spitfire expert after this project. That’s the fun part, right?
-LP
Thanks Larry, That flypast was brilliant, I wouldn’t want to be standing where that camera crew were. I live only a few miles away from the Jaguar assembly plant at Castle Bromwich, which was previously the Vickers spitfire factory. The Jaguar production lines run through the same factory building. My Grandfather was an engineer in the Dunlop factory next door to the Vickers factory where the tyres were made and I served my engineering apprenticeship less than 1/2 mile from the works. So there is a lot of spitfire history in the area.
Cheers
Rob
Before I knuckle down and learn how to set up blender models for Sketchfab or Blend4Web I thought I would have a look to see if the 3DNP blender plugin from Thorsten Schluter still worked, and was pleasantly surprised that a 2011 plugin still works in the current version of Blender. The plugin takes a series of radial camera shots around an object and uses a java script in you web-page to switch the images on mouse movement to give the appearance that you are rotating the model in 3D space using the mouse.
It’s not possible to embed the animation on this forum but can be seen << here >>
Thorsten Schluter’s 3DNP plugin can be downloaded from << here >>
you could ask Forum help to see if they add this method to show it with the
Thorsten Schluter’s 3DNP plugin
might be possible and would be nice
mind you can also use the Cycles script to make a 3D model for WEB
but not certain it can loaded here but can give a link I think
happy cl
i found a PDF file on the Spitfire
might give you some interesting facts about it
but I could not upload it cause it is bigger then 2 MB
but try to find it on web
name = P I L O T ’ S N O T E S FOR S P I T F I R E XVI MERLIN 266 ENGINE
happy cl
Thanks Ricky
sorry for the late reply I am just back from a couple of weeks holiday touring a few of the sites in the USA (Arizona, Nevada and California areas).
I have downloaded the pdf and will have a look once I catch up and get back on top of things.
regards
Rob
