Building Lasers

[Del Rykert]

I concur..  His tapes do help those of us that have limited knowledge or don't have an engineering background.  My forte is health and the tapes have helped me tremendously.
 
    del
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Keith Black 
  To: discussion at nsrca.org 
  Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 2:24 PM
  Subject: Re: Building Lasers


   think lasers are hugely helpful in some cases. I find them particularly helpful when trying to draw a straight line on an unlevel surface, or a particularly large area such as a line across an entire room. An example of an unlevel surface for modeling would be drawing a straight line right down the center top of a fuselage from the top of the fin to the front of the nose, or when drawing a line down the side of the plane. In both of these cases you're working with a curved surface and the laser will follow the contour (be sure it's lined up correctly). 

  The down side to lasers I've found are: One, the laser I have has a relatively thick beam as compared to the accuracies we need, between 1/16th" and 1/8th" depending on distance. It's harder to be exact that you would think. Second is that you can sometimes be misled when the beam goes across surfaces that curve further away or closer to the source of the beam. This will distort the beam unless it's exactly even with the location you wish to draw the line. 

  After messing with lasers in the past to try and do alignment I feel the best way to align the stab is to have a level table, put a scribe line on the rudder post and use a square to make sure the fin is perfectly perpendicular to the table. Then when mounting the stab use a height gage to make sure the stab is exactly the same height from the table at all points (front corners, back corners, center fronts, center backs). This will yield a perfectly aligned stab, height wise at least. You also need to make sure the stab tips are aligned equal distance from some center point in the front of the plane (I won't go into this, the best bet is to buy Bob Noll's tapes).

  Black
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