Qantas 737-800 VH-VXM

1
July 10, 2022
This one is gonna be a doozy. There is a ton of flash, and no locating pins or holes. The plan is to build a full interior and add lighting.
2
July 11, 2022
Contour gauge = fail. Next attempt will be using hot glue to try to get some meadurements
3
July 12, 2022
Back to square one again. I tried sanding this time instead of. Urging to get the right shape. Converting this to a 3d model is going to be a PITA. I might have the floor prototyped to make sure it fits properly before designing the sesting, overhead area, and galley areas
4
July 12, 2022
It’s not perfect, but it’s a start
5
July 12, 2022
The edges don’t 100% match up to the
6
July 13, 2022
Basic floor shape is done, although I’m fairly confident that the fore and aft sections aren’t parabolic enough and will need to be re-done. Next step is to break the floor into smaller sections for printing, but also create some formers that work together to keep everything straight and supported, while allowing me to route electrical stuff underneath
7
July 13, 2022
Floor shape and formers are roughly designed. There will be many adjustments after this initial prototype. Next step is to add locating holes/pins to the formers and floor, to make sure everything stays square when attached.
8
July 13, 2022
9
July 13, 2022
locating sections are blocked in, and formers should slot right in (theoretically 😉). Last step before prototype printing will be to split the floor section into smaller pieces to prepare for printing
10
July 13, 2022
Prototype should be fully done. The splits are located a 2-3 centimeters away from the inner formers, which should provide as much rigidity as possible. The center of the middle section should be sitting on top of the main gear bay structure, which should provide plenty of support. The gear bay does bring into play another issue, which will be routing wires through/around the gear bay structure.
11
July 13, 2022
12
July 13, 2022
A brief mockup of the seats. Thankfully, most of the dimensions are easily available online. The difficult part will be modeling these, and making sure they're *mostly* to scale
13
August 5, 2022
14
August 6, 2022
Since I’m STILL waiting for the floor prototype to be printed, I’ve decided to get started on some smaller pieces. The cockpit is an easy segment to paint and complete. I think the main gear bay and wings will also be fairly easy to complete, although wiring the wingtip lights might be a bit more challenging
15
August 6, 2022
I think I will be modifying the back of the cockpit, to display an open door. This will allow another angle to see the interior
16
August 7, 2022
Seats, yokes, and cockpit ready for paint
17
August 13, 2022
As I was working on the engine assemblies, I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I could get the turbines to spin..... So here we are, adding spinning turbines. The 5v motors I purchased are 24mm in diameter, almost a perfect match for the resin fan piece that comes with the kit. These prints should ensure that the motor is perfectly lined up with the housing for the blades
18
August 14, 2022
Right engine is mostly constructed.
19
August 14, 2022
20
August 14, 2022
21
August 18, 2022
22
August 18, 2022
Quick fit up to make sure everything fits reasonably well. This is gonna be a big boi
23
August 18, 2022
I wanted to fit up the main gear bay before assembling it. In order to make sure that the gear bay fit well onto the lower fuselage section, I wanted to make sure that section fit into the rest of the fuselage. The main gear bay assembly also has pieces which connect to the wing assembly, hence the entire mock up
24
August 24, 2022
The floor finally arrived. All of the pieces required a bit of cleanup in order to fit as needed, but the assembly looks great.
25
August 24, 2022
Time to fit this up, I want to make sure the fuselage pieces fit before I make any new measurements with the floor pieces
26
August 26, 2022
Fitting the prototype floor. I had to make some minor modifications to the formers to get them to fit snugly along the fuselage.
27
August 26, 2022
The front piece will require a few changes. It needs to be extended another 6mm to meet the cockpit door, and the front edge needs to be widened another millimeter or two to fully meet the inner fuselage. I think I will scratch build the bulkheads
28
August 26, 2022
The back piece will require some additional modifications as well. The back edge needs to be widened another millimeter or two as well. The shape of the floor needs to be more parabolic. Finally, the rear most former needs to be another 2 millimeters deeper to touch the inner fuselage.
29
August 26, 2022
A list of changes required, excluding changes to the back piece
30
August 26, 2022
A view of the inside through the windows
31
August 26, 2022
32
August 26, 2022
The entire inner and outer fuselage will need to be painted with at least 1 coat of black paint to prevent light bleeding through.
33
August 27, 2022
I had a small amount of free time, so I decided to start thinking about the position lights.
34
August 27, 2022
My original idea was to drill into the clear plastic and stick some fiber optic cable into the piece. I got too impatient, and ended up poking through the plastic, and also snapping it in half. It might be salvageable, or hopefully BPK sells spare parts
35
August 30, 2022
Prototype floor v2. The floor is a couple millimeters wider, as are the front and rear edges. The front has been extended another 6 mm to connect with the cockpit floor. The middle section has been split in two, so that it works with the main gear assembly. Finally, the floor has been thickened to be 2mm thick. This will allow for cutouts when installing the seats.
36
December 17, 2022
After a VERY long break, I’ve finally come back to this build. In order to line up the floor with the main gear assembly, I added some styrene to hold the floor. My mistake was attaching that styrene to the gear assembly instead of the fuselage half.
37
December 17, 2022
I doubled the floor thickness to 2mm. The goal is to 3d print channels into the floor so that the seats can be very easily be inserted all to square.
38
December 17, 2022
The gap between floor and fuselage is definitely better than the first iteration, but there is still too much of a gap given all the light bleed that might happen.
39
December 17, 2022
Although the gap looks large, the space between cockpit floor and the printed floor is only ~1mm horizontally
40
December 17, 2022
The inner former is too big, and forces the floor to be too high
41
December 18, 2022
Version 3 of the floor is ordered. The major changes are adding the cutouts so the floor fits into the main gear bay structure. I've also tweaked the connecting fingers, as the tolerances have meant that I need to do quite a bit of manual modification to get everything to fit together as desired. This print will also be using the most likely final material which is a high detail resin. The front has been lengthened by 1mm, and the front and rear most sections have been modified to have a more curved radius. (Hopefully they fit better against s
42
December 18, 2022
The inner two formers have been shrunken slightly and rounded. This should hopefully allow them to fit into the fuselage hal

Comments

34 10 July 2022, 12:32

David R. Meizoso
Wow, that's an ambitious plan! Following!

10 July 2022, 13:41

Cuajete
Me 2!

10 July 2022, 17:25

Treehugger
Hmmm.. Maybe 3d printing for the chairs I am thinking, maybe 3d printing the entire cabin in one go could work, incl. the floor. 🙂

10 July 2022, 17:37

Łukasz Gliński
Me 4! I have to watch this, switched to 144th instead of being that brave 👍

10 July 2022, 18:11

Gary Kitchen
Following along 👍

10 July 2022, 18:14

Ben Marshall
Always great to see a big jet in 1:72. The gentleman's scale! Following with interest 😄

10 July 2022, 22:35

Reaper_lead
@treehugger the entire interior will definitely be 3d printed. I'm planning on buying a contour gauge so I can get everything as accurate as possible. The plan is to use side glow fiber along the windows and in the overhead spaces. Most of that wiring will be at the back where there are fewer exterior lights.

10 July 2022, 22:57

Reaper_lead
@ben Marshall. 1/72 is the ONLY scale. I'm personally excited for the BPK 1/72 Boeing 777-300ER

10 July 2022, 22:58

Dietmar Bogatzki
Following this ambitious projekt..

12 July 2022, 05:29

Oleg Bogolei
Following!

12 July 2022, 11:49

Finn
Will be really interesting to follow!

13 July 2022, 08:30

Gordon Sørensen
Watching! Looking forward to following your progress on this!

13 July 2022, 17:00

Reaper_lead
Prototype floor is ordered and should be here in 2 weeks. In the mean time, I will switch gears and try to start designing the seats. For anyone that wants to take a look around, i've made the file viewable using this link: tinkercad.com/things..S-jisxxsdFu3oAGZEBbo

13 July 2022, 18:08

Dietmar Bogatzki
What are you using for a CAD program, Reaper?

14 July 2022, 06:58

Erik De Smet
following to see how your 3d project works out. Did you find the seats on tinkercad ?

14 July 2022, 08:16

Reaper_lead
@Dietmar I'm using an online tool called Tinkercad. Rather than building polygons yourself, it provides some pre-built ones, so it's easier to use than traditional CAD software.
@Erik I "designed" those myself, just to get a general sense of the dimensions for the more detailed ones

14 July 2022, 13:22

Reaper_lead
Sooooo.... I just discovered United Airlines' Star Wars themed 737 N36272, and I don't think I can say no

5 August 2022, 21:20

Spanjaard
Wow, very interesting and ambitious, I will certainly take passage on this flight!

5 August 2022, 21:28

Andwil
Interesting project. Please note there is no u in Qantas.

6 August 2022, 05:30

Cuajete
Great, Reaper!

Sith...??
aws1.discourse-cdn.c..b8c48e4612bc635.jpeg

...Or Jedi??
[img1]

😛

6 August 2022, 09:39

Reaper_lead
@andwil, thanks for catching that. @cuajete what a silly question. Sith…ALWAYS 😉

6 August 2022, 13:49

Cuajete
I assumed 👍 😄

6 August 2022, 17:25

Cuajete
Looks big!

19 August 2022, 17:34

Cuajete
Good progress! 👍

27 August 2022, 11:51

Dietmar Bogatzki
for the first prototyp floor its good

27 August 2022, 16:49

Reaper_lead
Thank you! I'm pretty happy with how the floor fits. It's not pictured, but I ended up cutting the middle section into two pieces, since laying the floor on top of the main gear bay assembly meant the floor wouldn't be flat. I also did some prototyping with the engines, to see if I could fit a motor inside the nacelle. While I could fit a motor in there, it spun too fast, even at lower volatages. I could try a motor with a reduction gear box, but I don't think that would fit inside the engine nacelle, so I think the motor will not be spinning after all

27 August 2022, 17:29

Cuajete
Well done so far 👍

17 December 2022, 18:45

Skyhiker
Oh a big one... Cool!

17 December 2022, 19:14

Erik De Smet
Reaper, have you tried to put a resistance in the motor feed? It should slow down the motor ...

17 December 2022, 19:18

Reaper_lead
I tried adding resistors to the motor. I could only find motors that ran around 10-15,000 RPM, so by the time they were operating at less than 1,000, the motor didn't have enough torque to spin the blades.

17 December 2022, 21:24

Reaper_lead
I may keep looking, but this is already a bit of an ambitious project at this point

17 December 2022, 21:24

Erik De Smet
If it has to run that slow, you definitely need one with a reduction gear

18 December 2022, 09:51

Bernd Grün
Very ambitious project. Following with interest. 👍

19 December 2022, 08:36

Reaper_lead
A little update since this has been sitting for a bit. I am still waiting for V3 of the floor. I received the parts a few weeks ago, but they were massively incorrect, so I've had to work with customer support to get the items reprinted

28 January 2023, 01:00

Cuajete
👍

28 January 2023, 18:27

Dietmar Bogatzki
Fantastic work on the floor 👍

31 January 2023, 09:48

Project info

Boeing 737-800

42 images

1:72

On hold

Boeing 737-800

Qantas (1920-now)
B738, VH-VXM 'Mount Hotham'
2018
White, Red

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