I see you!

Jaguar Laser Ranger and Marked Target Seeker. (LRMTS)

Building this feature was a fun little mini project.  The usual printed parts made up the bulk of of this component build.  Just a bit of simple assembly and some paint brought the project to conclusion.  There were a few building steps that were worthy of mention.

First off making the clear bubble cover at the front of the LRMTS was a new machining experiment.  Originally I meant to vacuum form the part from clear acrylic sheet, going so far as to make a male buck.  After some consideration I realized that I would consume a large quantity of my thin acrylic sheet to produce a very small part.  My vacuum form bed is 9” by 12” and the cover part measured 0.75” square.  Do a little math here and you could see the massive waste of material if I pulled just on or even a few parts.  Even had I filled the whole vacuum area with parts, that would have been 20 - 30 parts far too many that I would ever use.

So I turned to the milling machine.  The part fit with in the 0.2” sheet acrylic I have on hand and is far cheaper than the 0.040” sheet I would have to vacuum form.  This turned out to be a straight forward two sided milling operation.  Using the milling options in Fusion 360 I ended up using a spiral milling operation with a ball end mill with 0.002” step over (distance between utter passes).  I started with the inside surface, then the machine marks were removed with flexible sanding sheets and used progressive grits from 400 - 2500.  That was followed by use of a buffing nib on my Dremel and polishing compound.  Finally a polish with Novus No. 2 Fine Scratch Remover and then Novus Clean and Shine.  The stock was mounted on the mill and the outer surface cut and the same sanding and polishing steps were repeated.

The painting was relatively straight forward.  Most parts were painted Gunze black and the internal frame received a coat of MRP anodized aluminum.  On the seeker head pivots were covered with very fine wiring, that appeared to be kapton type by the translucent orange yellow coloring.  Those wires were too fine to be replicated with actual wire, so there were simulated with a yellow - orange wash over the anodized aluminum painted parts.  Some white wiring was applied a the front center of the seeker head and finished will black painted stripes to represent the wire tie downs.  At the back if the seeker was a coated glass that caused an iridescent reflection.  This was accomplished with a small sheet of plastic laminated with clear iridescent film, sourced from the wrapping paper section of my local department store.

My reference collection included a shot of the LRMTS that had a yellow “seal” around the circumference of the clear cover.  I attempted to simulate this by painting the edge of the LRMTS body.  Well a combination of the clear cover refracting too much yellow and the tight fit scraped off some paint when it was assembled, not to mention I rushed a bit an the yellow was applied poorly in the first place, the result was passable but the next iteration will be done differently.

That’s in for now. Cockpit and fuselage exterior surface finishing is under way. More soon and thanks for stopping by.

Written and performed by,

Timmy!

December 17, 2019