“this is my first plane, it’s a scratch built stick and paper towel”
There were no die cutters or lasers in the early days; I often cut out the parts from a blueprinted balsa sheet or off a set of plans. During high school I found other interests and stop building. In 1998 I joined the SEFSD club, brushless motors we just starting to become popular and Aveox was the motor of choice. I’ve been involved in the hobby ever since.
Late in 2003 Pandy purchased Sureflite, he approached me to help him run the company. Pandy came up with the bright idea of taking on a dealership with GWS. We had 1,000’s of items in stock, but things did not go as planned. Controlling inventory was a very time consuming job, we even designed an inventory program to help but I decided that office work was not my cup of tea and after a year we departed.
Soon after, I built my first CNC router which I used to build and repair kits.
“the machine that made DWFoamies famous”
A local club member asked if I could cut some Depron foam, he wanted me to copy and cut a “Shifty” which was a popular foamie from Charger RC. I told him to design his own, he came up with a YAK 54.
Pedro Brantuas
In 2005, his YAK became the first kit that I sold under the DWFoamies name. I have cut and sold over 15,000 kits through the years. In peak times I was cutting up to a dozen kits a day, today it’s more like a kit or two a week. Because of manufacturing demands in the housing industry, Depron is no longer imported into the USA. Our supplier has enough Depron to carry us through summer of 2017. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever and the DW era will come to an end.
Multirotors started getting popular in about 2012, using my CNC router I started designing and cutting frames.
“Our small 220mm V-Tail frame”
“Our large 1200mm Monsoon frame”
Learning to program the flight controllers was not easy. We were on our own programming for both autonomous drones and 3D quads. The industry was moving very quickly and the suppliers could not keep up with the demand. Without hardware it made it very difficult to sell kits and I decided to move on to another venture. With the knowledge I gained in programing drones, it was a natural progression allowing me to program controllers for CNC machinery.
3DimensionalTools is my current company, many of the tools that I manufacture came from previous tool designs I used in earlier business. I build production grade 3D Printers, CNC routers (16” x 32” tabletop size) and small format vacuum formers for the hobbyist. I often have 2 or 3 printers on the bench for testing purposes.
“3D Printers running tests”
This allows me to print some of the latest designs that are becoming popular in the RC market. There is a company in the Czech Republic that produces some great quality 3D files for printing on FFF style printers, typical printing times around 70-80 hours.
“3D Printed 48“ Edge”
My newest addition to my shop is a 60 watt laser with a 16×24 cutting area. I can see some classic balsa short kits coming to your local hobby shop! The laser has rounded off my tool collection allowing me to create proto-type designs for customers and keep it all in-house.
“The Shop”
