For the past four months, the Sky Hopper team have been working on our first demonstrator of our SSX model. We opened our first-build workshop in Ayrshire in the middle of June.
The purpose of this first platform build has been to:
- Develop standardised manufacturing methods using alloy that will allow us to create a strong core for the vehicle.
- Develop our initial CAD drawings into a production toolset that will allow us to build multiple vehicles at reasonable cost.
- Train new technical tasks in the process of building Sky Hopper vehicles.
In the process we have also set off our production process that matches 3-d printing techniques with carbon fibre component development. The issue here is to match our vehicle’s structural core through hard points to the sub-assemblies that make up the rest of the vehicle. This requires locating those hard points and working on the stress and strain calculations that ensure the platform’s forces are contained in the flight regime.
We will update this report shortly as we complete a follow-up effort underway now to audit all the component parts of the engineering platform and revise our CAD system design to meet those changes we have made through the prototyping process.