Wow! Nice little ramp onto a nice deck with a great view. 
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Nice, Dave! Beautiful view, too!
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Here’s a little machinist’s model of a hot air engine powered fan. Not quite complete yet.
KyKo engine
The originals of this were used in the Persian Gulf up into the 1930’s. Apparently very efficient with a pint of paraffin lasting about 10 hours.
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Does a hot air engine generate more smoke than heat?
Obviously designed to move air but (not trying to be a smartass,) for cooling or heating??
Good question.
I think for cooling but as I understand it, very little heat was required to make it run.
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My grandfather’s shop stool. Must be about 65 years old. Original paint.
The Red Stool
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Nice render.
Rounded corner in the shop, makes for easier sweeping. 
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Simple, and yet not entirely. Out of curiosity, on a piece like this with non-rectilinear legs, how do you establish the angle or splay? I can think of multiple ways, but wonder if there’s a best way.
There’s an extension called Rake and Splay which creates some guide geometry to help with this kind of thing but in this case I opted to model a frustum to “build” the legs and rungs on. The first leg was modeled vertically and then rotated so it’s centerline is on the corner of the frustum. Once the first leg was rotated into position I used Flip to make the additional copies. On the original stool I measured the distance between the underside of the seat and each rung so it was also easy enough to layout those locations on the frustum with guides. They were laid out on two adjoining sides and then flipped to make the copies. The top of the frustum is at the bottom of the seat and so the seat was modeled in place on top of it. Of course modeling things in place centered on the origin meant no screwing around with moving things into place.
Edit to add: I initially created the undercarriage as simple cylinders as shown below. With careful consideration of the component origin location and axis orientation it was a simple matter of select instances and replace selected. The simple cylinders are easier to deal with for alignment and makes changes easier to manage. This morning I checked the dimension between the feet and found the foot print a half inch too large in each direction. Simple to fix, though.
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Nice. So, is the starting frustum based on just dimensions, i.e. top and bottom square size and height?
Yes. I determined the distances between feet and the top of the legs at the bottom of the seat as well as the vertical height of the bottom of the seat. Two squares, one for the bottom and the other for the top dimensions. Move the smaller one to height with Autofold.
FWIW, the only extension used in modeling this thing was Bezier Spline for some of the curves on the legs and and rungs.
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I viewed the FWW video this morning and found it very useful. Several good techniques are there that I will have to try.
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Another machinist’s WIP. This is a little tramway locomotive using a little wobbler steam engine.
tram engine
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Dave, I may need your help in the future. My next major undertaking for the Battleship New Jersey Museum and Memorial is going to be a 1:48 model of Engine Room #3 including cutaways of the Main Reduction Gear and the High and Low Pressure Steam Turbines. In my past two projects I worked mostly from estimation since I didn’t have good dimensioned drawings. For this one I’ve found a full set of original drawings covering all the engineering spaces and equipment found in the National Archives. They are not digital or microfilm and I have to go to College Park, MD in person to view, copy or photo them. I can do a respectable double-helical bull gear. I don’t know how to model the steam turbine blading and making it all 3D printable.
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Something a little more practical for a change. One of the plastic guides for the locking bar on one of our windows failed due to UV exposure so I modeled and printed a replacement. The OEM part hasn’t been available for many years.
One of the originals:
You can see it isn’t long for this world either.
I couldn’t see any practical reasons for the extra holes, curved wings or the notch so I simplified the replacement. The window manufacturer may have used this part on other windows where those features are needed. And probably some of the design was to reduce the amount of material used.
And here’s the 3D printed part in place.
I don’t expect this to last forever. No idea how well PLA resists UV exposure but for 15 cents a pop, I don’t really care.
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