Aerospace manufacturing engineer here. Love the process! If you ever get to a production rate in the future where you have more than a couple aircraft in flow, you might need to create another assembly fixture. When you do that, just make triple sure that it matches the original fixture as closely as possible. Even though you’ve done everything you can to retain dimensional accuracy, every aircraft built on it will inevitably make changes. So if you ever need to duplicate it, invest in a laser scan to make sure your new assembly fixture matches as closely as possible.

You and Mike Patey have restored my faith in the future of aviation after watching the Raptor debacle. 😎

@Smokkedandslammed

Жыл бұрын

I haven't seen any of his videos in a while, what happened with the Raptor? That thing was so cool lol

@codyhaynes5680

Жыл бұрын

@@Smokkedandslammed He ignored a ton of warning signs, didn't focus on weight, ended up like 900lbs over design weight and eventually crashed it due to a very predictable engine design failure. He was fine. Plane and dream were dead.

@Smokkedandslammed

Жыл бұрын

@codyhaynes5680 Oh dang! I remember him wanting to use dual MoTec and people giving him crap about it. I guess I have some catching up to do lol

@4stringmanagmaildcom

Жыл бұрын

Unfamiliar with the Raptor project you refer too. Can you provide the channel? Thx.

@thewheelieguy

Жыл бұрын

​@@Smokkedandslammedchoice of engine management systems was the least of the problem s

As others have said, I would love to see how you are bonding the spars/ribs/grid to the skins. What testing have you done to validate this approach and what mitigation do you have for cracked or damaged bonds?

@muzzarobbo

Жыл бұрын

interested in this too

@TC-oh2li

9 ай бұрын

Agreed. Once the lower skin is bonded, how would you address a disbond discovered by NDI?

I worked as a Manufacturing Engineer at Boeing 1979 through 1990 on various projects but the 747 was one. It is gratifying to see manufacturing getting it's due. Elon has said designing Tesla cars was easy, the Manufacturering system was the hard part. Carbon fiber was before my time but it's really no different from a build perspective than fiberglass. Key thing here is bonding the rib structure pieces to the skins and other components together into a single assembly. Would really like to see much more detail on how that is done. Verification of adequate bonding material but not too much (weight penalty). Will every wing assembly be static tested to design load due to variability in your assembly process? Would like to hear these issues addressed. Great project and video series!

@adamkinsey3139

Жыл бұрын

I second this request. It's definitely easy to CNC the 100-200 "flat" parts of the ribs/shear-web/internal structure, but this choice creates the new problem of assembling that 3D jigsaw puzzle. Assembling that with precision and reliability across the hundreds of epoxy joints/interfaces sounds very difficult and laborious. Any plans to automate/streamline that?

@nathanchalecki4842

Жыл бұрын

I'd also like to see how they accurately tracked and forecast/estimated weights. The Raptor project is a great illustration as to how this can go so, so, so wrong. Just a bit more here and a bit more there, then suddenly you have something that can't carry passengers.

@ulbuilder

Жыл бұрын

@@nathanchalecki4842 Since they have the entire airplane in CAD all they have to do is assign a material to each part. CAD knows the volume of each part, the density of the material and can then calculate the mass. It can even give you the CG of the whole assembly.

@nathanchalecki4842

Жыл бұрын

@@ulbuilder I know that much :-), however it can be difficult to translate the cad model into layers of cf, liters of resin, adhesive to bond components, etc etc

@jj4791

Жыл бұрын

@@nathanchalecki4842 it's more art than science until you develop enough data to predict anything.

Thank you for taking us along Riley! I have learned a lot from watching you guys design and build the aircraft and the processes for replicating it.

Great breakdown of the process. Finding the time to attend your composite course is proving difficult, but it is getting close to the top of my to-do list

This has been fantastic to see how things are done behind the scenes as you all progress further and further. I know I don't speak for myself when I say I very much appreciate it the extra effort to document the process and share it with us!!! I'm so excited for your company.

So much detail in this wonderful video. An incredible effort and results!

Fascinating video, you’re an excellent communicator, thanks for documenting this project

So you guys inspired to get into making. Over the last year been learning everything around electronics, cnc, 3d printing, polyurethane casting, etc. In fact, this week I am moving out of my room in my apartment I have been using as a make shift studio, into a workshop, so can start really working with more complex materials and techniques. Seeing your mold pattern making for a plane opened my eyes to what can be made with CNC machines and a lot of the modern tools available now. If you can make an actual plane with readily available tools (and a lot of knowledge) then surely can make anything. It's the knowledge part I am lacking. Thanks for this.

Nice clean and organized production, keep up good work.

Hreat to learn about co-curing! I’m really enjoying how clearly you articulate your design choices and your design journey. Inspiring and fascinating. Im really looking forward to your next video!

Great video as per usual. Can't wait for the next one.

Fascinating, thanks. You are all very impressive.

Always great informative videos

Great content, you guys are on a mission and what you do is an inspiration to a lot of us viewers. Your rigour is outstanding and I also appreciate the efforts you go to to share and explain the inner workings of the project to us. You are some good people 🙂

This video should be training material for every new design engineer, and maybe the old ones too. Great job guys!

Remarkable patience and process!

Really interesting thanks for sharing

Sir, I am really fascinated to see some solid concepts required in oth designing and material manufacturing. Thank you for showing this. May be not all of us can visit an aircraft production hangar and see it ourselves. Your videos are the one that drove me to choose aircraft design as a master subject.

Not only are these brothers first-rate engineers in their own right, but all three are excellent teachers 👌 superb!

This presentation was incredibly interesting!

You guys are amazing! Greetings from greece

Outstanding!! Thanks.

I love the color scheme of the Dark Aero on your screensaver. Looks fantastic. Can’t wait to see it. Please consider partnering with Horizon Hobby so they can make an RC version of the Dark Aero.

Awesome. You can make as many videos as you want I guarantee you'd get thousands of views on all of them. This is top notch stuff. Keep it up!!

Great work

Really Awesome info...😍🌹👌🏻

You're going to make it. Keep up the videos.

Excellent! Thanks 👍👍😊

Wow! You guys will succeed. Very impressive

Really great tour of the wing manufacturing processes. Could you in another video talk about the wings' innards? Control lines, mechanical movements (ailerons, flaps), fuel tanks, and so forth? Thanks!

can't wait to see this thing fly.

great vid on wing, i would like to see compairable vid on fuselage THANX!

Great video.

This is amazing

so true what you say about needing to think about manufacturability while designing. In my case i have to think about how to assemble and put it together with enough precision without having every tool at your disposal. I think i figured out an approach.

Nice this multibeam design is better for torsional strength and avoid flutter on entire wing👍

Fascinating!

wow great video

What a gift to the manufacturing community- thanks!

Guys, totally class operation & what a sexy bird! 😎

Watching a new process today that will become common tomorrow!

Assembling the oven around the wing is very cool

Hi Riley, great video as usual. The technical details shown are very interesting for anyone interested in engineering ☺️. 2 questions I have: How many wings do you estimate that you can build per day/week with this setup? How many wings in total can you build before the mold needs to be replaced or overhauled? Thanks again for posting these great videos. Keep em coming and good luck with preparations for the first flight!

Looking forward to the first flight

Another excellent discussion, thank you! Can you provide a guesstimate of the production time you expect will be involved in producing each wing set, and how that compares with traditional kitplane wing manufacturing? Also, can you make the same comparison for the time investment required by your kit customers vs a comparably sized typical composite kit?

Hi, what bond line are you maintaining between the skins and shear webs. Also process are you using to check it prior to final skin bonding and close out. Have done very similar work and very much enjoy watching your project. Thanks

Aweseom video! Cant wait to see more! Maybe a weird question but have you guys ever considered floats? It would be another large part to manufacture but might be another selling point for your aircraft!

@rangefreewords

Жыл бұрын

Yes. As long as they maintain an EXPERIMENTAL ticket they can still sell popcorn.

@thewheelieguy

Жыл бұрын

The generally low and slow characteristics of floatplanes are 180° from the profile of this.

just awesomeness

Very impressed with your skills, process and progress. Awesome work guys.

7:38 as you tilt the test wing pice you can see there are deformations right where the spars are does that also show up in the real wing? do you expect that to be a problem?

Thanks for this great video. When will we be able to order and get the kits?

I wonder if you explored different types of bracing in the wing.... you might be able to remove weight and material with cross bracing, or a cardboard type infill.

PLEASE! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, FLY THIS THING ALREADY! We can't wait!

How do you prevent tiny pinholes in the bonding fillets from letting fuel into the exposed shear web cells? In my experience it's hard to get perfect watertight bonds EVERYWHERE

Order of operations. It works in math, and carries over to manufacturing. Great work!

Could you elaborate on what material production molds will be made of? For the aircraft material itself had you chosen flax weave material would your weight and spar support areas added quite a bit of weight to the final aircraft? I understand there are some tensile issues, but as far as the infusion process, would it have been more cumbersome?

Very interesting. I found that in processing plants operability was studied but on most occasions very little thought was given to maintainability. That is, a maintainability study wasn’t carried out.

Cheers, the best channel of manufacturing... Jesus, What a bunch of guys very smart toguether....

Flight tests before refining all the little bits is highly recommended.

Great work; I've been following your development and I'm impressed with the technical design work you have accomplished. As a design mechanical engineer I'm curious why your wing has no diagonals in each of the rectangles as this would greatly increase wing stiffness.

@tymoteuszkazubski2755

Жыл бұрын

I would expect diagonals to be covered by skin layup with +-45° layers.

Really good presentation. You've made a massive investment in the moulds. I hope you don't decide to make any changes to your prototype, it will turn the moulds into junk. You'd have to have a ton of confidence in your design before doing all this. Ballsy.

Riley and Brothers have a Happy Holidays. It is so cool that you looking ahead and doing a Awesome job. How Much Cheaper are your Molds comparing to Aluminum Molds ? Just thinking of Building a American make F5J sailplane. Thanks. Peace Be With You

Absolutely awesome educational lecture! Look forward to flying your plane soon! I am involved in superlight electric helicopters, would be great to have a conversation regarding blade production!

I don't understand why you don't do the maiden flight and flight test first. You will surely have to make changes to the plane and molds. Of course you always have the production in mind, but one step at a time. Otherwise, I think the whole project and your videos are great

Do you guys route your plumbing and harnesses in Onshape? The space company I work for wants to use Onshape but from what I've seen routing is a nightmare. Am I missing something?

How reliable is the perpendicular gluing? any delamination issues under repeated stress? any tough requirements for how the glue is applied. QA.

The tooling is good, OK for a skin as such But show me your main-spar. If it is a load bearing skin how do you transfer the tension loads from the lower wing skin over the hump of the lower fuselage?

Thanks for the video. A really good one. What I've learned with infused high-temp moulds - do not use gelcoat. Just 200g/m2 fabric as first layer and high quality infusion. Gelcoat will crack.

@spdcrzy

Ай бұрын

Does that apply to the vacuum oven molding like they're doing as well?

@kyrillkryvenko752

29 күн бұрын

@@spdcrzy That applies to any process with temperatures 80C and above. Gelcoat will expand and start cracking. Actual type of gelcoat will define how soon or late this will happen.

@spdcrzy

29 күн бұрын

@@kyrillkryvenko752 the more you learn - thanks!

Great Job! Make sure you get some financial Guy on Board.

Do you have to account for the thickness of the epoxy surface on the CF molds?

Why segment the spar? Wouldn't it be stronger if it was run full length? or at least some of them?

What have you guys done for repairability r&d?

When will we witness the first flight? (Great work, guys)!

It's so inspiring the way you organize every process in the making of the dark aero 1, including knowledge keeping and sharing. From the perspective that you share, it seems like you have gone through the right path of managing resources (money) from the beginning of the design while working until the idea of production prototyping the first aircraft. You "spend" time on sharing that process, but at the same time you create fans and future customers, while building the capability to meet the demand you are creating. I would love to know what are the principles you apply on project management what is the grand scheme of all the process you initiated and keep moving from the beginning, including content creating, production of courses, resource management, actually prototyping an aircraft and the negotiation of a supply chain for production period. Maybe that's asking too much rsrs

@comicahmet

Жыл бұрын

I wanna know where they are getting the money to fund all this

@onethousandtwonortheast8848

Жыл бұрын

@@comicahmetVenture Capital

@rangefreewords

Жыл бұрын

Get laid. The brother's don't have Tinder yet. 12 points of Lucas says I am staring at a Max Lucado booklet.

Hey guys, I am really impresses by the quality of your content! What would you say are the worst shortcomings of onshape in contrast to solidworks or siemens NX?

@abel4776

Жыл бұрын

License servers, lag, drawings/lines/points disappearing, only to come back after a restart, etc. Only from an amateur's perspective though.

I really love this channel and the dark aero concept. Have you thought on using reusable silicon membranes instead of the vacuum bagging? I worked with that tech on the past and I think it is game changer for composites. You can check Alan Harper Composites, it is not cheap for starting but for mass production it will save you lot of time and money. Keep doing this videos!! Regards

Dimensional accuracy is increased by using the same material for the molds and the parts. As you heat and cool the mold it will expand and contract at the same rate as the part. I helped make heaters for fiberglass molds that made fiberglass passenger airplane interior panels.

11:20 - Company sounds pretty legit. Carbon composite wings with internally bonded... ribs? spars? lateral bulkhead? What kind of inspections? Some form of ultrasound?

As I do various consulting and design jobs in the electronics industry, I see this exact issue as well. A lot of people and companies simply don't want to think about how their product is going to get built, and it's seen as a problem for "someone else" to figure out later, despite it always circling back to the original design team to slap them around when deadlines start to hit. Onshape is going to bite you down the line though.

@vladstr100

Жыл бұрын

I'm curious what you mean by Onshape is going to bite them down the line?

@Spirit532

Жыл бұрын

@@vladstr100 You own nothing, it's all on their servers, and relies on you still having an account and having full access to the internet at all times. If they decide to ban you, or you lose internet access, or can't recover the password, everything you've ever designed is gone. It's a really shitty business practice, putting it all in a browser. Same with fusion360.

@vladstr100

Жыл бұрын

@@Spirit532 Ah yeah, I guess that's true. I'd hope they'd seriously work with those professionals to recover accounts and whatnot if it ever got to that point. Nice thing about Onshape I hear is it's easiest to collaborate with a team compared to SOLIDWORKS like I've been using for my senior design as an aerospace engineering student. We've been designing a supersonic business jet, so all the parts files have been on my computer and backed up on Google Drive for redundancy and easy of sharing parts and assemblies with my team.

@Spirit532

Жыл бұрын

@@vladstr100 Designing a business jet in SW is a bit masochistic. For complex multidisciplinary designs like that you would usually use Siemens NX with TeamCenter for versioning, management, and sharing - or whatever combo Dassault offers with Catia(but worse).

@vladstr100

Жыл бұрын

@@Spirit532 It's definitely been a pain in the ass but that's the software we get access to from the school. The CAD model is actually coming together pretty nicely, at least from a surface level view

You guys went to a great University; it shows.

Dang you guys are impressive.

Is there a date for taxi trials and debut flight?

Hey guys! Regarding the painting, would it be possible to have a final paint layer that is UV opaque but transparent to visible spectrum? Even if only some of the visible light gets through, the carbon fiber looks would be amazing.

@Jack-ne8vm

Жыл бұрын

Wrap with carbon look-alike?

Impressive and interesting. Personally I would want something heavier/more rigid than aluminum T-slot, and more fixturing to while in the oven, but I understand this is still the early stages.

Best part of all this, is we are slowly witnessing the birth of a future multimillion aircraft manufacture. At least this is what I hope for all your passion and hard work on this project.

Great work guys. You would think production streamlining and efficiency would have come long ago. Another case of the funds for inefficient manufacturing, development, and production are always there due to the minimal competition and low volume nature of aviation. Your approach should stir the mix.

What steps are you taking to make the Dark Aero 1 maintenance friendly? I would hate to see this airplane get on the market and not do well because of cost prohibitive/labor intensive maintenance procedures.

Do you have to replace the whole wing if there's small area damage?

@kazansky22

Жыл бұрын

Yea I'm worried about this Hangar rash happens.

I wonder if it would be possible to have the cnc machine [attach a label/some other way of labelling] the internal wing parts as it cuts them. See 10.21

@janeblogs324

Жыл бұрын

You can just put a texta in the tool holder and mark each part

Another excellent video fellas. One question and I’m sure you’ve probably covered it at some point. You mentioned the wing doesn’t have washout designed into it. I’m curious about that. Thanks again.

@DarkAeroInc

Жыл бұрын

Thanks for checking out the video! We discuss the washout in the first video of the wing series: kzread.info/dash/bejne/qYZ718ege8ebcbQ.html

@Mrsournotes

Жыл бұрын

@@DarkAeroInc Thank you!

I wonder if it's ever possible to make a wing without internal shear elements, only relying on CFRP's great stiffness.

Have you tested the wings for a bird strike at the 275mph cruise speed?

I was just wondering. I look at your design and it's exceedingly sleek, but after teaching physics for so long and looking at the industry designs, I am wondering, Why did you choose cut-hard-corner-type angles for everything. The rudder is not a smooth transition from the fuselage. I need info on this one. Keep up the hard work.

Do you think you'll put a flaw in the carbon fiber just to see at what point it would fail so you would know what point to test the wing for faults

I want one... And a four+ seat version. :-)

Maintainability seems like a really big concern. Pretty much any minute component can be repaired in aviation. If someone clips a wing on this thing pulling it out of the hangar, are they going to need a full wing structure to fix it?

Do you need to stop the wing from warping in the oven somehow or is that not an issue?

youre awesome