Quick Update

I'm not dead. I just haven't had any share-able projects so far, nor did I do much work on my project backlog. I did advance some things here and there, but work and school is killing me taking all my time at the moment.

Here's what I can share!

They're cleaning the warehouse at work, and I got to go home with a few interesting items. Some I will disassemble at some point...but first here's a box:

If only I could rotate pictures...

That I refinished.

Much nicer. According to the black tag, it used to be used for a Collimator that was probably used to check for planarity of big surfaces.

Not shown on the picture, but the box was all mangled. The tape was literally holding it together! As soon as I removed all of it, the bottom and the back fell right off. The front was fine though, so there was no need to tow the box outside of the environment. Nothing epoxy can't fix.

I also tried my hand at sewing for making a parachute for the rocket club at university.

This...stitch? Folding method? Thing? Is based on AC43.13, the FAA advisory circular for aircraft repair. The start of it is pretty ugly, but it holds together quite well. This is a great experience that will elevate my cosplay making skills to new levels!...that is, level one hopefully...because I haven't finished a single cosplay yet...

Speaking of cosplay, I finally grew a pair and added the molded and 3dprinted pieces to Dark Repulsor...now I only need to add details to the handle...and paint it. Haven't taken pictures though...I really need to get better about that.

On sourcing components and tools

One of the hardest parts of any project is finding just where to get the pieces you need. Americans have it easy thanks to McMaster Carr, which, if you're lucky, will offer same day delivery (looking at you Charles <.<) or Amazon Industrial. None of those ship to Canada....except to existing customers in the case of McMaster.

So, how do Canadians get supplies to make...well, anything? It depends what you need, and how quickly you need it.

Most of the sources are included in the materials sources on my side-bar, but I thought it would be a good idea to make an actual post about it. I'm not paid to write about any of this. If you have other sources, feel free to leave them in the comments!

I'm in no Hurry and I don't REALLY care about quality

Ebay and various direct-from-china websites have everything you need, including a jet engine or two, probably. Thing is, you're pretty much guaranteed to wait at least a month for it (even if the ebay estimated delivery says in 2 weeks, it lies), and then 1 or 2 out of every 3 items might not work, or work a very short time, or get to you broken. I used to also buy from Aliexpress, but they don't accept paypal anymore... and i'm not ready to give my creditcard number to china just yet.

I want quality stuff/I need it in less than a month

If you want electronic parts, the regular American sites do ship to canada. Sparkfun, Adafruit, and Pololu are all very good sources...Adafruit and Pololu in particular since they have tutorials. Not only that, but the usual, more engineering-oriented sites work too. Digikey has a canadian website (Digikey.ca), and element 14/Newark ships to canada.

For electronics, Canada has a few shops of it's own too. Robotshop and SpikenzieLabs, for instance, are both based in the Montreal area.

If you need anything related to RC, motors, batteries, and such, Hobbyking's where you'll want to go. Their parts have been used in everything, from silly go karts, to Battlebots, to powering, and then blowing up with, MIT's rocket (not the batteries fault. after 4 tries you'd think they'd find out how to do a proper recovery...) I know some people wouldn't consider Hobbyking to be quality, but it's really the middle ground between very expensive quality and cheap piece of crap.

If you want mechanical parts...well, good luck. Misumi USA does ship to canada (along with being VERY expensive. 67$ for a 250mm long 8mm leadscrew with 2 starts? i'll buy 4 from china and hope one is actually straight and made of metal, and only pay 30$ TYVM) and when you really need it it's there. Surplus Center ships to canada, and also kind of have a Canadian equivalent called Princess Auto. Fastenal is there for all your fasteners needs and is getting more and more products trying to compete for the hole McMaster left in the canadian sources, as is Ackland-Grainger.

Also, amazon.ca has some stuff.

I don't need no electronics or tools, I need raw materials!

Getting raw materials in canada is so hard, unless you're a company, or willing to pay (and have the space to store) 1000$ worth of steel or aluminium at once, no metal selling companies will want to talk to you. Some machine shops do sell in small quantity, but in my experience they tend to see you as a nuisance more than anything else.

Enter Online Metals. Want 0.5" titanium plate? You got it! Need C385 brass flat bars? got that too! Tool Steel? of course! 1100 Aluminium? Unless you want to make something out of actual Inconel, they'll have everything you need. While they have aluminium, I wouldn't recommend using them for aluminium. Instead, go to Aircraft Spruce. Because they are canadian, they don't have the antidumping tax american companies (like online metals) might get hit with. They are also a good source of carbon fiber, glass fiber, and epoxy. Both also sell plastics.

If you don't need wide sheets of metal, Sidecuts might be a cheap source too.

I want cosplay/Artsy stuff

Canada has a good source of cosplay supplies, although I can only really mention the ones I've used.

Sculpture Supplies is my source of Smooth-On products, but they have everything related to sculpture; tools, materials, Worbla. But finding something on their website can be hard sometimes if you don't know the exact name of the product you're looking for.

If you want EVA foam, there's only one place that sells REALLY great EVA foam. TNT cosplay! (they also have Rytlock Brimstone on their main page, so why WOULDN'T you want to buy from them?)

I want...information

Then go look at websites! Try finding blogs or youtubers that happens to do something related to what you want to do.

Charles Guan
Bill Doran
Kamui Cosplay
Evil Ted Smith
Jimmy Diresta
Clickspring
Dan Gelbart
Matthias Wandel

On rocket launches, internship, and electronics.

As some of most of you know, I'm a member of the GAUL, the "Groupe Aérospatial de l'Université Laval"...or the Laval University Aerospace Group, but then LUAG doesn't sound good...and LUA group sounds more like a programming language group...anyway.

Way back in...erm, May? Right after the finals, we finalized the rocket's design and started building it. Being in the aerostructure team, aka 'Mech E. guys that talks about Reynolds and Young' I volunteered to help build the structure, and, thanks to the help of my spray paint expertise 'Shakes fist at Elucidator', paint it in time for the reveal at the Montreal Cosmodome.

Our initial design for the structure was supposed to be a tube with 2mm thick wall made of carbon fiber. That sizing was done considering that the rocket's most important stress was in compression, at ignition. Which means that the carbon fiber...fibers only took away from the strength of the epoxy because fibers are only good in tension. Sadly, we didn't receive our carbon fiber on time, and had to do with glass fiber. Since that wasn't what we did our design calculations with, we went very conservative and decided to have a more traditional design: an inner cardboard tube, with 2 layers of glass fiber, and 2 layers of carbon fiber we had lying around.

Structurally, this is a beast. Weight-conservation wise...erm, let's not talk about it.

The only picture of the structure before it was painted

Once that was done, I also 3D printed parts for the payload team. Here's the structure for a fiber-optics gyroscope. That was easily the biggest single part I've printed so far!

A gyroscope or a plasma grenade?

Then came a rushed paint-job to have something ready for the unveiling of every Quebec team participating this year. then stripping it and making a good paint job. Doing that I've learned a few things:

• Sanding is a pain.
• Fiberglass is a pain to finish.
• Some canned paint don't play well with each others, and sometimes even with itself (Krylon colomaster white, i'm looking at you).
• Sanding after your paint screwed itself is a pain.
• Using water-based fillers (like wood filler) is a BAAAD idea. They soften once they get painted on, and they stay soft. THAT'S why cosplayers use Bondo or Quick Seal
• Sanding after your filler didn't stick on the rocket anymore after painting it is a pain.

But in the end, we ended up with something semi-decent (and which I didn't take pictures of)

The only picture I have 

And almost immediately after, OFF WE GO! We went with 2 rental cars and a van. We followed each others until the American border at Sarnia. We all went through one after the other, but somehow one of the team missed the restaurant WITH THE GIANT 60-foot american flag, and so after the border we just went.

The giant 60-foot american flag one of the cars managed to miss...

The drive as a whole was quite boring. One person drove, another person co-piloted, and the last one was sleeping in the back, rotating each roles every 6-8 hours...so it's also a blur. I took a few pictures of the...like...3 interesting thing we saw on the way.

I must say I was expecting the Mississippi to be...larger. Took near Davenport. Maybe it gets larger farther south?

Surprisingly small.

It was also my first time seeing the rockies.

Took near/in Denver, Colorado

My sub-team got there first! We took 44 hours, including the one time we stopped to sleep. We even beat the guys who flew to Salt lake city. Then we started working on the integration of he electronics and the payload.

And there it is! The payload is in the payload bay! and finally we can drill the holes for the nose cone. 2 weeks later than I would've liked, but oh well.

And now the competition! We're launching far away from town...like 30 minutes away, in the middle of the desert. Well, 'Desert'. That was way more green and alive than I was expecting. But then we also got a few dust devils...so meh.

Base Camp,. you can see the launch rails if you squint real hard.

Our launch went pretty well! Beside the...erm...structural integrity problem where, when our drogue chute deployed, the sheer pins holding the main also blew (oops) and thus our main deployed near apogee. That made the rocket go really far. When it landed, it also dragged on the ground for like 400~500 meters because of our gigantic chute and the high winds.

You can see the mark of the rocket dragging on the ground.

We ended up in 4th place, and our fiber optic gyroscope got an honorable mention!

Then we went and visited the Arches national park. If you're ever in Utah, GO THERE! it's so beautiful.

Internship

While construction of the rocket started, I started working at Lortie Aviation as an intern. They own a fleet of 16 Hawker Hunters. My job there is to update drawings and support the avionics department.

Some Hawker Hunters

As a student in mechanical engineering who also enjoy some electronics, and who realize that, thanks to robotics, even mechanical engineers will have to learn some electrosities...and a follower of weird battlebots #Overhaul2, oh, also, jets?!

This is like a dream internship! I get to see jet engines being overhauled, and the very important links between electrical and mechanical systems...or between any systems for that matter. While I've worked on 'complex' projects before with FIRST and SAE Aero Design and Gaul...most systems were...mostly independent.

Oh, I also learned circuit and PCB design is a pain, you have to take way too many things into account (Thermal Management, Power Dissipation, Electromagnetic Interference, Noise in general, filtering, coupling, impedance matching, breadboarding, timing...) , many of which is hard to account for before your prototype is actually built and then you have to start over with that new information...and then making that prototype you've probably released the magic smoke on a few components (50$ DAC here ._. among other things).

Sincerely, if you know an EE...hug them, they deserve it.


SPARC Standard rules

Translations are coming soon(tm). I severely overestimated the time it would take to translate, and my free time. They should be ready by the end of the year (probably).

This week on Big Fred's Cosplay and Rocket Shop

ok...not really week, but who keep counts, right?

Elucidator Scabbard

After having finished Elucidator, I decided to give a try at making my own scabbard. As with any project where you make something for the first time, research is key. Thanks to our overlords at google, I found this page describing two historical, and an easy method of making scabbards.

http://www.yeoldegaffers.com/project_scabbard.asp

So, because I'm a bit lazy, I decided to go with the easy method.

First I made the rough shape.

Then I used scrap pieces to build the details. I also thinned the piece near the opening because it looked even fatter than your mom Weird Al in "Fat"

And the final result.

Now, those make it look like everything went well, but it didn't. At first, because of the thickness of the felt I lined it with, it was way toot tight, to the point where paint on the sword itself would get scrapped off. The only way I found to fix it without opening the whole thing, or sanding the whole sword ~1mm thinner, was to get a rough piece of wood, a whiff thicker than the sword was, and repeatedly insert that...implement, in the scabbard. As a result, some fiber on the felt stuck on the wood, and after a while, removed just enough for the sword to have a tight fit, without destroying the paint.

Dark Repulsor

Just a quick glimpse of what I'm working on. I'll probably be making it during the October school break, in between researching on carbon-fiber layup and CFD on rocket bodies.

Speaking of rocket bodies...


ROCKETS!

Since the FIRST robotics team I was managing doesn't exist anymore due to budgetary constraints, I decided to join a student project group once again. I was torn between Avion Cargo Laval, the  SAE Aero design group, which really need more people, Robocup, a project to make a team of robots that plays soccer, with one of my friend, or the GAUL, which I actually wanted to join since they started up again a few years ago, but thought I was too inexperienced to join.

Since it's my last year and a half of university, in theory, I decided to not help my old team, or my friend. Instead, I decided to do what I always wanted to do; what actually put me on the path to being an engineer: rocket science.

The first team activity we did was build rockets together. We had a choice to either work on a team rocket, or get our own kit. Since I like diving in the deep end on my first try, and I really like making stuff, I got my own kit. I'm cheap though, so I went with the cheaper, smaller kit, called the Screech, thinking it would be a one time thing and that it would either break, get lost, destroyed, or that i'd have my fill with that one and the competition's rocket...

The completed rocket, Thjalfi-1, pronounced Thyalfi, just like Mjollnir is pronounced Myollnir and eyjafjallajokull is pronounced eiyafyallayokul.

Boy was I wrong. We went to Ciel d'Octobre and the rocket launching community seemed just so nice compared to the RC plane community. We launched 5 rockets in total, mine and another small kit like mine, the communal DX-1, and 2 rockets made by the team's senior launchers. My launch didn't go so well: first the wind got pretty strong near the end of the day, so we angled the launch pad maybe a bit more than we should have. Then, my color choice wasn't so great. Chrome is actually hard to see against a cloud cover AND cut corn, so everyone lost sight of the rocket at it's apogee. Finaly, the parachute didn't deploy properly: the nose was probably a bit too tight. I was afraid that was going to happen, because it was really tight...but since it was my first rocket, I really didn't know how tight it had to be. In any case, that is only conjecture because we didn't find the rocket in the end; maybe the chute did deploy and we just didn't see it; maybe it deployed but was burned by the explosive charge maybe...

I didn't see any cows, that's proof right?

In any case, that was fun. It reminded me of my youth, launching model rockets in the sand quarry in my hometown. I'm not satisfied with my launch though. I'm going to build a bigger rocket for next year, and get the certifications needed to launch it.

Welp, add rocketry to my infinite list of hobbies...which really could mostly be summed up as:

My wallet ._.;

AND IN THE NEXT EPISODE! WILL ROCKET CFD BE AN ACTUAL THING? WILL FRED BE ABLE TO FINISH HIS COSPLAY ON TIME? OR WILL HE BE KILLED BY THE OVERWHELMING COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN CLASS?? FIND OUT...SOMEDAY.