Thank you Hans, that is great!
I found my fin design because I knew when I exported the STL file and the time stamp is the same time zone as on my computer.
Is there a way to ‘browse’ the other fin designs without opening every single one of them?
I don’t know how hard it would be to do, but maybe a page of thumbnail pictures of all the fins could be created?
Thanks again, Mik
PS: Getting closer to actually 3D printing a functional large fin. Print is now at 49% and looking good after 14.5hrs of printing.
Hi Mik,
That page is not an “official” page.
It is quite slow (not optimized) and is created purely for my own analytics (track usage).
finFoil is able to generate thumbnails from foil files. And a nice catalog was on the roadmap.
A catalog that allowed tracking changes and history of your fin design. As well as for individual profiles and outlines.
Maybe I’ll pick up the work again some day, but this industry left me a bad taste.
I love watching this community play with fin design, and I’m proud to have had a hand in all this, by creating finFoil and introducing OpenSCAD.
If it picks up some more, I might get fueled to finish off some more features.
That’s a shame that there is not enough interest in finFoil.
I think that might change once it is possible to 3D print your self-designed and fully functional fins at home.
So far, very expensive printers were required, but I think the development of printer technology and filament chemistry has advanced to the point where this is possible.
After trying and failing for 3 days in my attempts to print with polycarbonate, I have returned to Polymaker PC-Max.
Multiple lessons learned (from the PC print failures) and solutions integrated into the design’s .gcode, and suddenly it all seems easy, and Polymaker PC-Max prints like a charm.
How hard would it be to add more of the control points to the finFoil program? Would it be unreasonable for a beginner programmer to expect to ‘copy and paste’ another dozen of them into the code? I guess that is what is needed to design bumpy leading edge fins.
Adding points is quite easy if you are not afraid of some notepad wizardry 
Open your .foil file in notepad (or export the outline and open that, it is smaller and therefore less confusing).
All the curves are expressed like this: “path”:[[“M”,0,0],[“C”,32.189,-63.064,140.798,-227.139,269.5,-228.96],[“C”,296.139,-229.34,336.98,-220.88,340.6,-194.479],[“C”,342.959,-177.3,269.19,-156.229,247.09,-124.084],[“C”,199.756,-55.24,226.86,-13,232.86,0]]
You can just copy paste a path section multiple times, it will add multiple points on top of each other which you can drag apart in finFoil.
so if I duplicate the last section in the previous path a few times, I get this:
“path”:[[“M”,0,0],[“C”,32.189,-63.064,140.798,-227.139,269.5,-228.96],[“C”,296.139,-229.34,336.98,-220.88,340.6,-194.479],[“C”,342.959,-177.3,269.19,-156.229,247.09,-124.084],[“C”,199.756,-55.24,226.86,-13,232.86,0],[“C”,199.756,-55.24,226.86,-13,232.86,0],[“C”,199.756,-55.24,226.86,-13,232.86,0],[“C”,199.756,-55.24,226.86,-13,232.86,0]]
Save it, open it and drag the points apart.
I know the experience is not smooth it the editor as it requires some more intelligent math than just duplicating sections. That’s the main reason adding sections is not implemented in the editor.
But hacking the .foil file is supported
Hans, you are an absolute champion!
It will take a little while to sort all the new points out, but it’s just a matter of time.
Blind testing of Gull-Whale vs Gull-Wing fins in the water will soon be possible.
There it is:
With bumps: http://finfoil.io/s/3D/sj59fwcyry1a9uqntc1c9aju9i3txr39
Without bumps: http://finfoil.io/s/3D/4kxqcr3qye4r5pxbrqg6qp5nusoqefj9
If you open both in different tabs and click edit, then it becomes obvious how it’s done and also how similar these two fins are.
Surface area etc are all practically identical, so any difference in performance must be due to the bumps.
The “Drag photo here” feature is fabulous as is the rest of the finFoil program!
Thanks again, Hans!
Great, looking forward to the results!
BTW, you can see that the resolution of the 3D file is a bit low to get smooth bumps.
If you like, I can make you a high res export with smooth bumps.
Hans
Thanks, Hans, that would be great to have a high res version.
I found the resolution a little low for the smooth edge version of the fin, too. Although I selected the maximum ‘100 layers’, it has about 20 distinct steps along the foil, where it is flat rather than curved.
Maybe you could insert some public/private key system and let the user machine do the heavy number crunching for the rendering, after it has uploaded the .foil file and in return received the authentication key?
I don’t want to inconvenience you with multiple requests for high resolution versions, but I kind of expect that I will want to make small incremental changes once I have a printed representation of a fin in my hand.
However, I have tweaked the Peregrin-Whale-Fin a little bit and a high res version of it would be great to have.
http://finfoil.io/s/3D/xdhx5mc7ebdz71uw4h77yaz3ritfhheh
If it’s not too much trouble, then also a high res version of the non-bumpy variety :
http://finfoil.io/s/3D/zfproos46yd6czjqrai1at9dnty1s6pc
Have you noticed that fins with a forward knuckle do not get shown in the online editor of finFoil? Or is that just on my computer?
And another question: If a user other than the designer of a fin modifies the file, is the original still going to be on your server?
Last not least, I have reached a milestone and printed an entire fin. Only to ruin it minutes later when the thermostat in my kitchen oven malfunctioned during annealing, melting the fin through the oven grid…
Hi Mik,
Just refresh your 3D render pages and you’ll find the hi res version!
http://finfoil.io/s/3D/xdhx5mc7ebdz71uw4h77yaz3ritfhheh
http://finfoil.io/s/3D/zfproos46yd6czjqrai1at9dnty1s6pc
This is a service I’m happy to deliver on request to people like you that help spread the word and support the server costs!
You can get stuff printed online for pretty cheap and test out your designs.
Thank you, Hans!
A 3D print of the high-res fin, with improved base-plate, in a new (to me) material is in progress.
Using Polymaker PC-Plus transparent this time.
The fin I printed fromPolymaker PC-Max (and then ruined during annealing) turned out to be too dense… as in: it sinks in fresh water. Not good enough for the standards I’m trying to set for my little project.
So, I have adjusted the infill from 15% to 10% and minimum perimeters to 4 (from 5). More hollow spaces, less strength, less warping, more buoyancy.
And because it is being printed from clear material, ‘non-destructive evaluation’ should be much more reliable.
This is so much fun, I can only liken it to my recent affair with Plaster of Paris: It makes it so easy to shape what you want, compared to sanding down layered resin/glass composites. But finFoil makes it totally repeatable. Once you have ONE fin that you are happy with, you can reproduce it any number of times. Or, more importantly, you can incrementally change it to tweak it to virtual perfection.
Halcyon-style fin with Ricky-style halo
Halcyon template picture: http://www.swaylocks.com/groups/fin-theorytomhalycon-and-others?page=45
Ricky’s halo thread : http://www.swaylocks.com/forums/first-fin
The fin was lofted into 3D with finFoil and template picture and output to STL through the online server.
I used OpenSCAD and Draftsight to make the mirrored copy, the 1/2" (13mm) halo, and the fixture holes to re-pin the blank for the second trip to the CNC.
I got some pin air and resin ripples on the flat side from trying to do that sticky-side down over plastic, live and learn. Otherwise halo bubbles and mill hiccups were minimal.
Now I just need a board…
Looks really good!
How did you get your logo on there? Was it laser etched, or engraved and filled with resin, or printed on rice paper and glassed over?
Also, I couldn’t tell from the photos, but did you first glass the back? It almost looks as if the top is glassed, and I wondered if you had first made the halo, foiled it in wood, glassed it, and then did a finishing pass with the cnc (all possible because of your mounting pins). I’ve always glassed after I was completely done foiling, and this looks cleaner than what I’ve done.
Thanks Ricky.
Yes, glassed the back early on. No, did not glass top before machining.
Here are the steps so far:
- Routed halo slot clean through board to avoid having to do a deep/accurate pocket rout to ‘kiss’ glassing
- Glassed bottom, laser-printed rice paper logos and 2 x 4oz ‘E’ + epoxy. Made mistake of curing sticky-side down on plastic, no way to pull excess resin and remove pin air. I need to do this differently next time.
- Poured epoxy halo after bottom glass set 3 hours.
- Machined foil and halo from top at same time after halo set ( 2 hours IR light @ 80 degeees F + overnight room temp)
- Sanded bottom
Steps yet to do: - Deweb fins from panel
- Sand and lam top, , fix 2 small burn-throughs from sanding bottom
- Fill coat and sand both sides
Thanks for the steps.
I now realize your last photo is of the back (I hadn’t looked closely enough to see that). I really like how you were able to do both fins at the same time (I don’t think my machine is big enough to do that, depending on the size fins).
Very nicely done jrandy!
CNC opens up a lot of possibilities especially as far as repeatable designs go. Having software like FinFoil that make is so painless to get the prototype modeling done quickly and easily is really cool.
Thanks Lawless. The finFoil portion of the project was the simplest and quickest part-10 minutes or so and I was probably drinking coffee and listening to radio at the same time. It’s a great program.
I’m writing in that post because is fins-finfoil related, a friend of wanted to print fins in carbon polycarbonate, i can make the file with finfoil or other cad but i can’t find the fcs2 tabs specifications. Can someone let me know where i can find them or can someone make a picture on graph paper to have an idea on tabs? thanks
These are the specs:
https://github.com/hrobeers/finbases/blob/master/scad/fcs.scad
And this is what it looks like:
Hi Hans, I think Nemoz is looking for these.
I want to say the old fins still screw into these, so some of the dims should be the same.
If anyone wants to measure theirs I can try to make an OpenSCAD entry for them.
Pics are from http://global.rakuten.com/en/store/rbsrbs/item/fcs_029/
