new motorized hinge system - now with a cargo spaceship, and a MK3 cargo bay

[Devo]

Damned Robotics

No, Infernal robotics. DR is no longer being supported.

[GusTurbo]

I suppose all good things must come to an end. It was always a bit silly that the structural pylon behaved that way.

Ah well. Here's hoping for stock hinges in the future. Or other exploitable bugs.

[VincentLaw]

here's a testbed for the I-beams / structural pylon couple, it's the most elastic version i found out - maybe you can try to remake your helicopters based on this (i tried, and it's spinning, but it's wonky to the point something will break ).

I tried using I-beams with structural pylons in a rotor hub design, but it didn't work, so I tried the standard radial decoupler and had more consistent results. It seems that when the decoupler gets stuck, the I-beam will spin, and when the I-beam is stuck, the decoupler will spin. These alternate modes have different amounts of friction, so if the two rotors are stuck in opposite modes, there will be an unbalanced torque.

To mitigate this, I gave the helicopter extra yaw authority and a bunch of SAS. The new 0.21 reaction wheel implementation may be strong enough to control yaw, pitch, and roll entirely without rotor input, which would allow for greatly simplified rotor design. This helicopter has a lot of stability/integrity problems though, and needs a redesign. I also discovered that if you make a part other than the cockpit the root part and it separates in a crash, the view/control will not follow the cockpit, and the pilot will be helpless.

More relevant to this topic: when I had the bearing I-beam connected to a micronode, both the I-beam and the decoupler could fail to rotate. Currently I have the I-beam mounted to a cubic octagonal strut and I have not had a rotation failure yet. I am not really sure what causes these rotation problems, but from my recent testing the physics have been inconsistent (varying between scene load), so I would say the locked structural pylon is in fact a bug, not a bug fix.

I have included my helicopter craft file as an example of a working rotor hub in 0.21. I assume it can also be applied to the motorized hinge system.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p2wibk4u2yrj29g/Clover%201.craft

Edited July 26, 2013 by VincentLaw

[el_coyoto]

This a very smart setup sgt_flyer!

I sense industrial espionage here, this idea is too good, the Kermunists are going to steal it...

[sgt_flyer]

@vincentlaw i'll check out your rotor hub design, to see if it can give me enough elasticity to be pushed by landing legs - thanks for the .craft

[Giggleplex777]

I have been experimenting with I-beams, too. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

[p331083]

Not so fast.....

[sgt_flyer]

i manage to open 1 side of my Mk3 cargo bay too - but it's currently too unstable in 0.21.x (and can lead easily to breakage) - the structural pylon's elasticity has been modified (it's base it very difficult to move ).

[p331083]

And just when my shuttle was ready to be exchanged .