Customizable Conformal Rail Guides by amiliv

Last crawled date: 3 years, 4 months ago

Customizable conformal rail guides. Couple of STL files are included. More sizes and options can be easily generated from included source file for OpenSCAD.
Note: For some reason preview in OpenSCAD doesn't render properly. Hit "render" button instead of "preview", and it'll display correctly.
The generator supports:
Any tube size or rail size; with handy presets for common rail sizes.
Change any dimension of the rail guide such as length, width, height, tab width, etc.
Regular rail guides, and rail guides with custom standoffs.
Option for a slot through the middle or solid.
Option to add holes for mounting screws.
If adding screws, generate supports so the holes will be close to round; they are generated with relatively small tolerances. Clean support material from the holes, then run a drill bit with a hand through it to finish cleaning it off. The screw should slide freely through the hole. Few twists of countersink hand tool are recommended if you have one with correct angle (82 degree for US screw sizes, 90 degree for metric screw sizes).
This was my weekend project to learn OpenSCAD. It's a bit rough around the edges. Since I can not control how these will be used (size and weight of rocket, motor used, materials used to print, choice of glue or other mounting options), there are no guarantees. If gluing the guides, make sure the total surface area of the base of the guide is large enough for the size and weight of the rocket. Adjust guide parameters / size for the rocket it will be used on. Bad things can happen if guide rips off the tube at launch. Make sure to use type of glue suitable for bonding material used to print the guide to the material rocket airframe is made off. I strongly recommend using filament material with good mechanical properties and dimensional stability.
Few examples of using included OpenSCAD file:
Generate rail guide for 4" airframe:
$fa=1;
$fs=0.4;
use
rail_guide_1010(tube_diameter=inch(4));
Generate mini rail guide for 38mm airframe:
$fa=1;
$fs=0.4;
use
rail_guide_mini(tube_diameter=38);
Generate 1010 rail guide with 5mm standoff:
$fa=1;
$fs=0.4;
use
rail_guide_1010(tube_size=inch(3), guide_offset=5);
See comments in the rail_guide.scad file for many more parameters that can be specified to customize the rail guide.