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| This photo shows the beginning of our plug with rough cross sections of the airplane cut out of 2" thick insulation foam from Home Depot. In this shot we are still missing about 12" of the aft end of the fuselage pod. A piece of carbon tube from last year's plane goes down the center to support the foam and keep it straight. |
| This photo shows the plug after it has been finish sanded to some degree, as well as the last portion of the foam added to the plug to fill out the end of the fuselage pod. The finished airplane will have a 1" carbon boom extending out the back. The total fuselage length will be around 7 feet long. The chunks of foam sticking out the side are where the airfoil is going. Eventually we put some balsa airfoil sections on either side, then blended the foam to them to give us a nice wing fillet. Our wings are in two pieces and plug in right at the wing root. |
| Another view of the plug. The firewall will be there at the front of the plug with the engine mounting to the front of it. There will be an engine cowl that will blend the spinner with the rest of the fuselage. Once the plug is finish sanded, we proceeded to cover the foam with fiberglass. Once it is all glassed, we filled the surface, polished it smooth, then from there we will create a two part mold that will be used to lay up our final parts. |
| Fuselage Plug |
| In this portion of the site I'll outline the process in which we created the plug for our plane, and the mold we will make from the plug. The reason we decided to make a plug, then a female mold was so we could make mulitple fuselage parts such as for testing, and for practice layups, plus we can get a smoother surface than the lost foam technique without having to use heavy fillers and such. For those of you who are not familiar, the lost foam technique involves making a plug just like the one you see here, then putting fiberglass and resin on the foam, making a hard shell. Then Melting the foam away with acetone. This works well for one off parts, but not so well for our application. |