Locomotion No. 1

 

In 1825, the steam engine Locomotion became the first engine to haul passenger carriages on a public railway. The engine was built by the Robert Stephenson Company under a contact with the Stockton & Darlington Railway to be run on the S&DR’s 25-mile track in North-East England. It weighed 7.5 tons (about 6.6 metric tons) and could manage a top speed, downhill, of 15 mph (24 kph.) Unfortunately, in 1828 the boiler exploded killing the driver.

 A replica of the engine was built in 1837 using some of the original parts and compatible parts from other engines. This engine was used as a static display by the S&DR and is currently on display at the National Railway Museum in York, England.

 This model is based largely on the 1937 replica. Because of the complexity of the mechanical components on top of the boiler, it was difficult to understand from photos how it all fit together. Until, that is, I stumbled on a 200-page report by railway historians Michael R. Bailey MBE, DPhil, MA and Peter H. Davidson MA (Cantab.). titled Locomotion No. 1, An Assessment of its History and Modifications Through Archaeological and Archival Study. This document turned out to be a treasure trove of explanations, diagrams and detailed photos of the whole engine.

#Locomotion_No_1 #S&DR #steam_engine #railway #history #Blender 4.1 #Cycles

 

B-24D Liberator Bomber

 In 1939, under a contract from the U, S, Army Air Forces, Consolidated Aircraft Corp. of San Diago designed a new heavy, long-range bomber, the B24. Its first flight was made in December of that year. Over the next six years, over 18,000 B-24s were built by Consolidated and under licence by Ford, making it the most produced military airplane in history. In addition to the USAAF the plane was in service with the U. S. Navy, the Royal Air Force and the Australian R.A.F..

With a wingspan of 33.5m (110ft) the B-24 had a range of 4,600km (2,800 miles), making it ideal for antisubmarine bombing in the mid-Atlantic.  It had a bomb capacity of 3,630 kg (8,000 lbs) and was armed with 11 .50 calibre machine guns. The plane was manned by a crew of 10: Pilot, co-pilot, navigator/bombardier, radio/radar operator, flight engineer/top turret gunner, ball turret gunner, two side gunners and tail turret gunner.

I chose to model the B-24D Strawberry Bitch, Serial Number 42-72843 mainly because the name was intriguing, but I was not able to find anything about the origin of the name. The plane flew over 50 combat missions between September 1943 and June 1944 with the  512th Bomb Squadron of the 376^th Heavy bomber Group based at Cairo, Egypt.

#B-24 #bomber #WWII #USAAF #Strawberry_Bitch  #Blender-4.1 #Cycles

Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star

In the spring of 1943, the U. S. Army Air Force (USAAF) realized that both the Germans and the British were seriously ahead developing jet-powered fighter aircraft. The USAAF gave the contract to quickly develop an American jet fighter to Lockheed’s Skunk Works (a super-secret, internal development group) in Pasadena. 150 days later the P-80 shooting Star, powered by a donated British Halford H1 engine was ready for testing. The final version of the plane was adapted to accommodate a wider Allison J33 American built engine.

The P-80 had a maximum speed of pf 933 kph (580mph), a cruising speed of 703 kph (437 mph) and a range of 1,754 km (1090 miles.) The plane was 105 m (34 ft 6 in) long with a wingspan of 11.85 m (38 ft 10 in). A couple of the prototypes saw some recognisance missions in the late months of the war in Italy. In all, 1,715 P-80s were built. In addition to the USAF and the US Navy the plane was used by several countries in South America.

This model and its livery are based on the F-80C version of the Shooting Star as it was in Korea in 1950 while assigned to the USAF 8^th Fighter-Bomber group, now displayed at the Museum of the USAF in Dayton, Ohio, USA.

#WWII #jet #fighter #plane #Lockheed #P-80 #Shooting_Star #Blender #Cycles

 

Messerschmitt Me 262A Schwalbe (Swallow)

The Luftwaffe ME 262A 1a was the first jet fighter to be used in combat in WWII. It attacked a British photo-recognisance plane over Munich in July 1944. (Both the Americans and British were also developing jet fighters, but they were only used in combat during the last months of the war.) While the plane was effective against allied bomber squadrons in the air, hundreds of them were destroyed on the ground by US Army Air Corps bombers. Of the more than 1,400 ME 262s produced, only about 300 saw combat.

The ME 262 was powered by two Junkers Jumo 004s turbojet engines with a cursing speed: 740 kph (460 mph) and an effective range of 1,046 km (650 miles.) It was armed with four 30mm MK-108 cannons and some versions carried two 500 lbs. bombs under the wings. The planes were 10.6 m (34’ 9”) long with a wingspan of 12.5 m (41’) and weighed 7,076 kg (15,600 lbs.)

This model is painted with the livery of the III./EJG (Ergänzungs-Jagdgeschwader or 3^rd Supplementary Fighter Squadron.) stationed at Munich.

#jet #fighter #plane #ME262 #Blender #Cycles

 

BRM P15

 

The BRM P15 was developed for the 1950-51 Formula 1 racing seasons. The car was powered by a unique 1.5 L, V-16, turbocharged engine. Unfortunately, the car was very unreliable; of the three races entered during the two years, it didn’t have any wins.

 Despite its record, I think it looked cool.

 #BRM #Type_15 #V-16 #Formula_1 #Blender #cycles

Pinecone

The pinecone modelling project certainly presented a challenge to my inner geometry nerd. After five weeks of researching the geometry of pinecones, I finally gave up on a purely mathematical approach and ended up using Blender’s geometry nodes in a trial-and-error methodology for my pinecone model that comes pretty close to the layout of the scales on the real egg-shaped cone. 

There are only two objects in the model: the stem and the scale. The stem is a stand-alone element in the center of the cone. The instances of the scales are distributed around the stem so that they follow Fibonacci curves, vary in size from large at the bottom of the cone to small at the top and the rotation of each scale on each of the three axes. The five variables are the number of scales, the size of the scales and the rotation of the scales in XYZ space.

Note: if anyone’s interested, the Geometry Node Setup is attached.

#pinecone #geometry #Blender #Geometry_Nodes #Cycles

The Seed

The Eden Project in Cornwall, England is an awesome experience that I’ve visited three times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_Project

Located in the central atrium of the Core building at the Eden Project, the Seed is an egg-shaped granite sculpture by Peter Randall-Page. It is four meters tall and weighs 70 tons. Due to its size and complexity, the sculpture took four years to complete. (It took me four days to figure out how to model the bumps.)  The arrangement of the bumps on the surface of the sculpture is based on the Fibonacci spiral, a geometric form often found in nature, e.g., the seeds in the sunflower blossom. In this model there are 2,952 bumps.

#Eden_Project #Seed #Sculpture #Fibonacci spiral #phyllotaxis #Blender_4.1 #Cycles