Jordan Pelovitz
Rochester, NY
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Initial Design Notes - These are the results of my two month+ internship in England, at a small aircraft design startup named e-Go Aeroplanes. A large majority of the early work was done via telecommute, in parallel with my normal academic year.
Currently we are waiting to produce the first complete mockup. Once the CNC cutter is free from cutting out airframe parts, we will begin using it to create the test cockpit.
Concept Sketches - These are the results of my two month+ internship in England, at a small aircraft design startup nam
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Concept Sketches
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Instrument Layout Alternatives - After several brainstorming telemeetings, my employers and I generated a list of what we would like to have in the cockpit, ranging from the fantastical to the realistic. We then paired this down to only the things that were actually necessary and doable, whereupon I took this new, much shorter list, and proceeded to try and lay out all the items in the most efficient and easily readable ways.
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Cockpit Storage Alternatives - Part of the brainstorming meetings was coming up with what we wanted to store in the cockpit, and where. The bottom right of this image shows two closeups of alternatives #1 and #8.
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Concept Sketches - These were done as experiments with using Illustrator for concept development.
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3D Concepts - I found I was having difficulty properly communicating the cockpit properly using traditional mediums, so I moved to an area where I felt more comfortable; digital 3D.
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3D Concepts
Genesis of the Current Design - These images are the result of me finally arriving in England for the summer and speaking at length with my employers about the actual requirements of the cockpit. Several concepts had to be thrown out due to construction/structural requirements, and the decision was made to reduce the size of a lot of the elements due to the 1kg (2.2lb) weight limit.
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Quick Dimensions Mockup - To test the earlier versions of the seats for comfort, we made these quick mockups by taking sections of important areas (namely the knee and rear area), cutting them out of foam, and sitting on them. From these tests, we found the initial seat design to be a bit too narrow overall, and the lumbar support that I had tried to add ended up being quite useless.
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Quick Dimensions Mockup - One of my bosses (the main engineer), trying the mockup with the center profile attached. The big cross like thing was there to test shoulder clearance, and the spray bottle is meant to be the joystick.
Current Design Evolution - These renderings were done in Rhino, as they were quick to produce and were made just to show my employers what their cockpit was looking like as rapidly as the changes were made.
The green accent lines were a nice touch that I had to remove in the final version of the cockpit, as with them we did not have enough room for the widest screen possible.
Current Design Evolution - Here are just a few more refined images, this time with a rough cut of the display added in. One of the key challenges of developing this project was that it had to accommodate either large, non standard glass displays, or alternatively several round "steam" gauges. Compared to traditional car interior design, you have much less control over the shape and placement of the instrumentation, meaning that the entire front portion of the cockpit had to be designed around fitting a myriad of displays.
Current Design - This is the most current design and is what is currently being machined for the test mockup. It lacks a throttle on the left side due to us not having the dimensions of the brakes required, but is otherwise basically complete. The removal of the accent lines is due to us moving to a 10" diameter screen instead of an 8", and the proper placement of the instruments on the bottom right and left insets causing them to break the lines in a rather unsightly manner.
Current Design Details - A closeup of the stick, and a shot of the cockpit from the side exterior.
Current Design Solidworks Model - This is the model that I generated in Solidworks, which allowed us to get proper weight estimations and cleaner geometry.
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Final Concept A - It was requested that I put together a more complete image of the cockpit, with the instruments actually relatively close to life and functioning.
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Final Concept B - Outside view of the completed cockpit.
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Final Concept C - Another outside view of the completed cockpit.
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Rough Cutting - Once the panel design was completed, I also designed the mold, which we fed to our CNC machine to cut. Here you can see it doing one of the passes on the rough cut.
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Finishing Cut on the Panel Mold - Here's the CNC machine doing a finishing cut on the mold - you can see many areas are still quite blocky and undefined. These would later be sanded down by hand.
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Finished Panel Comparison - Here is the finished mold as it came out of the machine, compared to the mold that I designed in CAD.
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Sanding Progress - Here is a shot of some progress I made during sanding - the green lines indicate where the panel mold ends and trouble spots I encountered (or made) while sanding.
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Filling the Panel - After sanding, we found many areas of the panel to be off (especially around areas where there was supposed to be a very slight fillet. I filled in these areas with drywall and sanded them down smooth, bringing the panel to the correct shape.
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The Finished Mold - A shot of the mold as it was getting ready to be glassed. There were still imperfections in it, however we decided that it would be easier to correct them in the finished piece than in the mold, as many times we had issues sanding right through the very soft foam we made this tool out of.
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The Combing Mold - An image of the combing mold as it was in CAD, before being fed to the CNC machine.
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The Combing Mold - Due to limitations of the machine, we had to split the combing mold in two halves; here we see both halves joined and the first stages of the finishing process.
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Combing Mold Cellulose Priming - This gray material is a cellulose filled primer, that we used to coat the mold and then sand down, to give it a more durable surface and fill in many of the small cracks, crevices, and pin pricks that had developed. Several layers of this were applied and sanded down. Unfortunately, by the time I left we had not progressed much farther than this stage on this mold.
The Mockup - An image of the mockup, made into a solid, in CAD. We took this model and sliced it in 100 mm intervals, then took the resulting profiles and cut them out of blue foam, to make the body of the mockup.
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Mockup Profiles - Here are the actual profiles for the mockup - on one side we would have, for instance, profile 2, and on the other we would have profile 3. We would cut them with one person standing on each side, calling out the numbers as they hit them. This allowed a reasonable amount of accuracy while cutting the shape.
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Mockup Progress - Progression of the mockup - you can just see the shape of the fuselage taking form.
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Mockup Progress - This image was the result of several hours of sanding and cutting. We had just finished cutting the profile of the canopy, where we cut two profiles out of wood, set them up at the correct height, and ran the hot wire along their length.
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Myself in the Mockup - Once we cut the canopy line, we took all the sections apart and repeated the cutting process, slicing out the interior. This image is of myself sitting in the still unglued mockup, testing it out. I'm avoiding leaning back because if I do, the whole thing will break, even as Matt behind me props it up with his weight.
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The Interior Shape - An image of the interior, sans myself. The mockup was very useful even at this stage; from just sitting in it briefly, we found it reasonably comfortable and roomy, however we found that I had made the area around the knees too narrow; it was fine if you were sitting straight, but once the joystick was between your legs, it became too cramped to move. This will be corrected in the mockup and then later in the model.
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