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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!
Probably until you get to the megaton range. At that point I suspect you’re probably bringing a lot of people with you.
And the environment!
Na, it sounds good but your ungrateful relatives take all your money.
Wont even take off
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.
Thankfully this one is built of many redundant layers instead of just one layer of metal.
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.
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.
You’ve flown Robinson?
Willingly?
And lived? Brave soul.
Good news is, that part ain’t getting off the ground. Bad news is, the rotor might get kinda fast first
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.
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.
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
Hah, Jesus nut
If an aerospace engineer made one of these he would no longer be an aerospace engineer.
Everything else you said is correct.
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?
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
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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.
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.
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… ;-)Oh yes they do.
Aircraft crashed in Gloucestershire after 3D-printed part collapsed - BBC News https://share.google/v8NcjqE0tAK34AiI7
IIRC that entire plane was a DIY plane from a popular kit, not a commercial vehicle.
(not clicking on a Google shortlink)
TPU? You’ll get PLA and like it
“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.
ChatGPT said it would work.
Big Helicopter hates this one weird trick:
And so do the people inside the big helicopter!
Wasn’t there a news story recently where someone had actually done this and (obviously) died?
Yeah, this is the before photo.
Is that why those two helicopters crashed into each other in New Jersey?
Not likely, this would get ripped apart on engine start.
For a crash, you need to at least get to the part where you attempt a takeoff.
It’s a Robinson. It crashed as soon as you thought about flying 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.
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.
Not my video, but I did ride it that year at the World Freefall Convention.
RIP
AND TEAR
UNTIL IT IS DONE
That should last about 0.7 seconds.
I was thinking the same thing! lol.
1590? Actually not even a bad price
Of course it’s a joke, but I am genuinely curious about why the 3d printed part looks so shitty.
It just looks like it’s been painted in anti seize paste.
But I think it’s just a really bad print.
Both photos are edits of the pictures on the wiki for “jesus nut”
15-20 years ago this is what we considered to be a good 3D print.
It looks like they 3D scanned it, and printed it rust and all.
Because it’s a Photoshop job of an actual Jesus Nut. There’s a wiki link in the thread and the page has this exact picture, mirrored and with no edits.
Looks like it’s been sand blasted
I see this guy decided to move on from fixed wing to rotary after his last plane…
It’s unclear if he printed it himself or the shop did. Probably himself, but man if it was someone else, I’d be pissed.
