AI said it would be fine. Send it.
One time, this was back in my skydiving days so a very long time ago, the drop zone’s CASA 212 was down due to a bad hydraulic pump. The pump finally arrived and the DZO asked me to help him install it. He was a certified A&P, I just had a lot of experience wrenching on cars but it allowed me to get a lot of free jumps due to helping him out on things like this.
He handed me the pump, which was a LOT lighter than I expected and told me with a smile: “Don’t drop it.”
In inquired as to how much it cost and he replied: “$10,000.”
I was holding a pump in my hands that weighed barely 10 pounds that cost more than my car (this was circa 1998 or so).
A couple years later the igniter box on the port engine died and I helped him replace it… That was a cool $15000. The engines were about $250,000 a piece back in those days.
That should last about 0.7 seconds.
That’s exactly the joke.
I was thinking the same thing! lol.
And now you’ve just given Boeing executives some great ideas how to further reduce costs! I don’t thank you!!
I have news for you:
3D printing is very common in the aviation industry by now.
They don’t exactly use TPU and Bambulab printers, though… ;-)“Hey, John! How much are we paying those 3D printers again? I found one here that looks like it would do just the same job for much less!” – quote that will show up in a leak in 2032 after a handful of planes crashes.
TPU? You’ll get PLA and like it
Oh yes they do.
Aircraft crashed in Gloucestershire after 3D-printed part collapsed - BBC News https://share.google/v8NcjqE0tAK34AiI7
Please tell me they’re not done, and they’re going to make a ceramic moulding of it, to pour a very strong alloy into… And have the competence in chemistry, metallurgy, metalwork and engineering to know they have the precision and strength to make it work.
This is a kind of part you want a single metallic-crystal of… anything less would we subpar and jesus. So no uncontrolled cooling of the cast for you. (or the rotor can decide this is a good day for a extra slow spin and no-flight.)
Yolo.
In this helicopter, we fucking ball!
That sounds like way more work for approximately the exact same result. If it fits, it fits :D
Stop trying to gatekeep for the fat cats in aviation safety. Your time of plenty is over. We’re onto your lies.
P.S. Pretty sure that dumb little spinny blade on the tail isn’t even doing anything. Just another useless part they want to sell you.
I’m sure it’s not the Jesus bolt(?), don’t worry.
He can just 3D print a second chance at life though, so you’re being kinda whiney bro.
Ok, i’ll bite: 3D print… in what material?
it’s a joke. Morons are crashing planes with 3D printed parts made with plastics designed for Pikachu figurines.
If it only cost pennies to print it’s not strong enough.
Yeah but it’s some serious costs savings!
Tpu
PET, of course!
So is the bolt food safe?
It’s PET, so probably.
You are ready to own an airplane if you can wake up in the morning, burn a $100 bill and flush it down the toilet without feeling anything.
You are ready to own a helicopter when you can do the same thing, except with ten $100 bills.
With a helicopter, I think you also need to be actively suicidal.
With all the bad shit happening due to corrupt government agencies, it’s refreshing to read comments in this post about how the FAA is still anal as fuck like they should be, though flying on a Boeing still makes me nervous.
I honestly don’t even believe that bolt is that cheap. I read horror stories about a set of 4 normal ass “aviation grade” screws that cost thousands of dollars.
Its the signatures that validate the screws that you’re actually paying for.
That doesn’t look like any bolt I’ve ever seen…
This is called the Jesus nut. It holds the main rotor onto the helicopter. It doesn’t have any redundancy, so if it fails, you’re going to be meeting Jesus in moments.
TIL there’s many Jesus’s nuts are all over the sky.
Chem trails! Jaysus is nutting!
Thankfully this one is built of many redundant layers instead of just one layer of metal.
Wasn’t there a news story recently where someone had actually done this and (obviously) died?
I think it was an airplane air inlet duct that melted and collapsed. And it was bought from a 3D printing supplier, not printed themselves. The person aboard lived. So it was more subtle, which makes it even more insidious. I.e. even for a simple plastic tube you need the expensive part, for non-obvious reasons.
Yeah, this is the before photo.
Someone who owns a helicopter but is bitching about spending $1500???
I know the post is a joke but it’s more like “somebody owns a helicopter rental business and they’re bitching about repairs on helicopters they themselves don’t pilot so they themselves aren’t in danger”
Helicopter landlord!
Skylord?
land?.. Helilord.
The etymology of helicopter is actually a compound word divided in an unexpected place:
- “Helico” means rotating or spiral.
- “Pter” means wing, as in the word “pterodactyl.”
So if we’re gonna bring that into another compound word, we should probably chop it in the right place: pterlord.
TIL 👍
And one step closer to turdlord.
Aerolord.
I just realized we will probably have aerolords in a couple decades. I should invest in clean air and stockpile it. Maybe it’s my chance to be a lord. I’m going to need a compound, barbed wire, and machineguns too. Shit, it’s a lot of work being a lord. I think I’ll just pay for an air subscription.
Oh, this perspective didn’t occur to me, it makes everything so much worse 😅
People think private pilots are rich because airplanes are expensive. They’re not - they might be upper-middle class (with a mortgage and other debt) but most have to budget their aviation spending. Truly wealthy people don’t fly their own planes, they hire pilots and crew, and probably have no idea what a Jesus nut looks like.
That said, this is obviously satire/bait.
I had to check up Jesus nut, and learned that’s what it’s called because it’s the one you pray will hold because if it don’t you crash. Hahaha
How do you think they managed to own a helicopter?
Unfair. I’ve spent my entire life not buying expensive (or even cheap) helicopter parts and I still don’t have a helicopter.
I do have a 3d printer, though…
Hm…
Jarvis! Preheat the print bed.
Not needing food or shelter anymore because you’re dead is also great for your budget.
Going out with a bang is great for everybody’s budget!
And the environment!
Probably until you get to the megaton range. At that point I suspect you’re probably bringing a lot of people with you.
Na, it sounds good but your ungrateful relatives take all your money.
Wont even take off
I printed an ABS powerwheels gear out for a friend to test the fit. 100% infill, tt was chonky, was going to get it redone in nylon.
it fit and was ripped to shreds in 30 seconds :)
Try 200% infill next time
Have you seen the prices on the non-Euclidean filament these days? Only Voidstar labs can afford that shit.
FYI: Plastic Welding is a thing that exists. Use it literally all the time to fix what my kids break.
Power Wheel Wheel included. Takes literally seconds to fix a crack
Gear D was what broke, it delivers the full thrust to the final axel and take most of the force when the wheel take a hit. there’s no welding that
You needed to increase walls
At 100% infill, it’s all wall. Though the better bet is probably using the printed part to make a mold.
Not sure, might be different. Like the infill might go side to side but walls go up and down. So increasing walls might still give more strength.
it’s a gear, so you need the layers to be perpendicular to the rotation to give it a chance, but the final drive interface came up off the gear like a tophat. It was not a good candidate for FDM. Realistically, it wasn’t a good candidate for resin either. The tophat really needed to be metal with an interface into resin or nylon for the gear to gear surfaces.
nah there’s a difference in print line orientation on all the slicers I’ve used. When printing functional parts like that, especially mechanical ones, you really got to pay attention to printing orientations
For a use case like this it would be a good use case to do 3D printed casting.
3D print the part. Mold out of silicon. Then make the final part in resin.
Or just buy the real part.
There’s also ways to make plastic parts via injection at home.
Resin was one of my early thoughts. The original Nylon is pretty tough, and they kept breaking gears. (I think he was overvolting it) He tried replacement boxes but they just broke immediately, he managed to get a couple of original gears at $80 a piece, but they didn’t last long either.
I think the right answer would have been to replace the motor with something that had a higher Kv and done a belt drive. (like electric skate parts with a little more ratio)
I bet there’s some good threads in RV cars forums for stuff like this.
I didn’t even consider belt driven.
Yeah, even annealing it didn’t help much. I think the original part of the injection-molded nylon was a bit under-specified.
It would have been a good project for metal, but it would have been 4 years in the box and cost more than the original ride-on.
To be fair, if you don’t have the files. This is an easy way to make a prototype and fit it, and then if it fits you can order it in metal. This is a cheaper proces in iternating in metal from the start
If the choice is between being out $1,590 or plummeting to my death in order to save a few hundred bucks, then I’ll just pay the $1,590.
They call it the Jesus Nut for a reason.
Good news is, that part ain’t getting off the ground. Bad news is, the rotor might get kinda fast first
Because it makes Jesus Nut?
Because if it fails, only Jesus can save you
Bull honkey, knock the rust off 'er, slap on some grease and she’s good as new
Got that Alaskan Airframe and Powerplant license, I see.
I reckon that’s right pardner
Spoken like a true Boeing engineer.
That’s what has me grinning! I’m not replacing a Jesus nut with anything that didn’t come straight from the manufacturer.
I’ve actually flown Robinson helicopters, and there’s no nut that looks like this on the helicopter.
So, probably a joke.
Yeah you just have to deal with mast bumping, as if thats any less worrying.
Mast bumping is such a gentle term for the main rotor just fucking off and the helicopter going from an aircraft to a falling object.
Ah … ! What’s happening? it thought. Er, excuse me, who am I? Hello? Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Calm down, get a grip now … oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of … yawning, tingling sensation in my … my … well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach. Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that … wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do … perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This … let’s call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet? No. Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation … Or is it the wind? There really is a lot of that now isn’t it? And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?
You’ve flown Robinson?
Willingly?
And lived? Brave soul.
I’d rather plummet to my death.
No. No.
For this part? No. You want the real deal. The proper metal. The proper alloy, annealed correctly.
Yeah, but to get there, you need a prototype. There’s nothing wrong with testing the fit using 3D printing before you order a copy in real materials, just don’t put it under any load.
You could print it with normal plastic filaments, but those can deform and screw with the measurements if you’ve got a really tight fit, so metal printing is a good use there.
Aerospace manufacturing has a paper trail longer than you can imagine. The company selling this part can tell you (well, the FAA) the exact ingot out of the foundry and every single process and every person who has touched it since then.
No machine shop will take this job; the moment this guy is unable to produce a serial number and paperwork from an approved manufacturer (likely during preflight if not installation) the FAA will track down the owner of said shop. At best that owner will lose their business and pay a massive fine, at worst spend a good long time in prison.
The FAA doesn’t fuck around and for that I am thankful.
Also, one-offs aren’t really allowed outside of r&d. Everything has to have at least one piece in a batch go through testing, including destructive.
How is the machine shop supposed to know it’s an aerospace part? The customer could just give them a reverse-engineered CAD file.
(Academic question, because making this part actually work will cost >$1500 without economies of scale)
Depends on how much effort went into reverse engineering the part, but most likely when tolerancing enters the conversation. Most machine shops aren’t able to hit those tolerances and would laugh you out of the shop.
A shop that can hit those tolerances will kick you out of the shop; there’s a good chance they already work in aerospace. They have a deeply vested interest in avoiding the accompanying FAA inquiry should it be installed or, Satan forbid, actually flown.
A non-aerospace shop capable of meeting those tolerances would start laughing at the desired price point. Purchasing a suitable blank alone would cost over $1500, much less cover the actual machining.
A part like this can have some tolerance because it experiences wear and tear and oxidation, if it had to be down to a few microns perfection, the helicopter wouldn’t fly in both hot and cold temps even on day one. Die and investment metal casting especially with CNC machining, which are common enough processes in metal shops, can actually get down to single digit microns. But this is all moot as no one would ever do this for many reasons.
It would have to be an experimental aircraft. Someone died recently when they installed a 3D printed intake that melted on their experimental single seater.
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I get what you’re saying but this is what is called the “Jesus Nut”. That’s because it’s one piece that essentially holds your entire helicopter up. To quote the Wikipedia page: …“whose breakdown would result in catastrophic consequences, the suggestion being that in such case the only thing left to do would be to pray to Jesus, or that the component’s importance could be likened to the importance of Jesus to Christianity.”
You don’t prototype this. You don’t make these. You get the tested, real part. There is no scenario in which making your own is advisable. Unless you’re an engineer for an aircraft manufacturer who is going to be doing rigorous testing then you should just buy the part ready made and certified.
Lol the meme is the picture on the wiki mirrored and edited
no scenario
Absolutes always get me scheming. What if you’re stuck on a deserted island with only a working 3d printer and a helicopter missing this part? What then? Yeah probably swim.
You build a boat out of the helicopter and 3d printed parts. I’ll be a bad boat, but the best case scenario for this 3d printed part is that it breaks under static load
Use the radio in the helicopter to call for help?
Gilligan already broke it.
I’d say cry, the small loss of water will bring the sweet release of death one step closer.
If an aerospace engineer made one of these he would no longer be an aerospace engineer.
Everything else you said is correct.
Hah, Jesus nut
So the design has never changed since it was made? The engineers have never needed to figure out an upgrade or slightly different way of doing it?
Of course randos don’t make them in their garage, but somebody does make them, and I don’t see a problem with experts incorporating this into their workflow. I don’t know why you do?
I think we’ve lost the context here. The person in the photo self-describes as a consumer - they should not be making this. That’s the joke.
Somebody who would be prototyping something like this works for an aircraft manufacturer, and there’s probably less than a thousand of such people in the world. If you are one such person you know so.
I’m one of those people and there’s absolutely no way I could produce a safe copy of this for less than $1590.
The part already exists though?
You can also print in different metals with various processes like laser sintering, still though, there are some things you might not want to skimp on: Probably best to stick to approved parts.
It wouldn’t surprise me if such a critical part was cast as a single metal crystal. The stresses on that rotor mist be unbelievable.
Pretty sure you don’t want a be doing that with an aircraft.
I’m sure it’s safe if you can do it correctly, but I would not trust myself like that
