5 Insights
Making tail boom using cue stick
1. Purchase a single piece cue stick which is conical for a longer length.
2. Select the part of the cue stick which is perfectly conical. Generally the tip of ...
Making joiner tubes
1. Apply vaseline / polishing wax on a carbon rod / tube which is going to be used as the joiner rod.
2. Apply tape in the reverse orientation (i.e Sticky ...
Gravity Hot Wire Cutter
For making this, we first made the cutting bow and fixed wheels for removing drag and ease its movement, Then we made the fixed arm with Aluminium I-section and the ...
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7 Files
Airfoils.zip
It contains the CAD drawings of airfoils AG-40,41,42,43
Airfoils.pdf
It contains the image of the CAD of airfoils.
Gravity feed cutter.xlsx
It contains the formula for calculating the distance of attachment of weights on the moving arm for tapered cutting of wing using the Gravity Cutter.
Getting Started.pdf
This contains the PDF that helps in designing your own template for an airfoil.
Visiting Cards.zip
It contains the visiting cards of various shops from where we procured our raw materials.
Tails.zip
It contains the CAD drawings of the Horizontal and Vertical tails.
Tails.pdf
It contains the image of the CAD drawings of the tails.
18 Documentations
8/6 - Preparing moulds
We cut the side profile of the fuselage in a block of pink foam such that our fuselage fits snugly in it. We then coated our fuselage with PVA. We also sanded our wing cores and there negatives.
7/6 - Reading about spar construction
We read about many ways to construct the spar. We also read articles about calculating the moments at various points of the wing and thus, calculating the strength of the spar required.
6/6 - Tail boom ready
We took out our tail boom from the cue stick and sanded it to give it a smooth finish. We also helped in the cleaning of the club.
5/6 - Tail boom laid
We laid glass and carbon fibre on cue stick to lay our tail boom. We also put putty coatings on our second fuselage plug and sanded it to give it a smooth finish. We then spray painted it,
4/6 - Horizontal tail finished
We waxed and spray painted our first fuselage. We took our Horizontal tail out of vacuum bag and sanded it. We sanded and readied our second fuselage plug for smoothening. We waxed the cue stick and gave it a shiny finish to ready it for making tail boom. We also completed the wing cores.
3/6 - Vertical tail ready
We took our Vertical tail out of the bagging and sanded it to give the required shape. We also readied the horizontal tail for bagging and vacuum bagged it. We also cut the wing cores again as we had cut them with the wrong offset earlier. But this time too, 2 of our wing cores were damaged due to improper heating of the Gravity Hot wire cutter.
2/6 - Vacuum bagging tail
We vacuum bagged our vertical tail. We again went to the department in search of vacuum pump, but in vain. We finished sanding of our second fuselage plug. We then cut the wings using the gravity hot wire cutter, but later realised that the offsets we marked were wrong and thus, we'll have to repeat the wing cutting process.
1/6 - Cutting wing cores
The fuselage wasn't finished up to our expectations as our epoxy-hardener ration wasn't good which lead to half-cured epoxy and thus, a sticky fuselage. Our joiners were weak too because of the same reason. Hence we cut-out another block of pink foam of the shape of fuselage and began sanding with extra care. We went to the department to search for vacuum pump, but the concerned person was on leave. We then cut the pink foam blocks for wing core giving the proper offsets. We also made another set of joiner tubes, this time giving proper attention to the epoxy-hardener ratio.
31/5 - Giving smooth finish to fuselage
We corrected the shape of the fuselage by sanding as it was a little bent towards one side near the end. We then applied layers of glass fibre on the fuselage and put it under heater to cure the epoxy. We then made joiner tubes by rolling sheets of glass fibre on a 6mm carbon rod. We left it in the club to dry.
30/5 - Making Fuselage plug
We made the CAD drawing of the top and side view of the fuselage and took printout on paper. We then cut the fuselage in a block of pink foam using normal Hot wire cutter and sanded it to provide an aerodynamic shape.
29/5 - Vacuum bagging tails
We readied the tails for vacuum bagging. But, when the vacuum bagging was in progress, the vacuum pump stopped and it released water in our tails. As our tails were extremely thin, they were destroyed when we tried to recover them from the faulty vacuum bag. We couldn't risk another tail and hence we decided that we will use another vacuum pump.
28/5 - Making Vertical Stabilizer and both Tails Ready For Bagging
We made another set of horizontal tail. Now we got two sets of horizontal stabilizer and we divided them into a original set and a spare set on the basis of accuracy of airfoil shape we got.We also made two sets of vertical stabilizer and they are also divided as that of horizontal stabilizer.We sanded them finely.We made a slot on horizontal stabilizer to attach a 1.6 mm balsa of size 3*3 mm to give reinforcement at the place where it will be screwed to get attached with tail boom.
27/5 - Making Horizontal tails using templates
We drew the CAD of airfoil ht08 and ht12 for the Horizontal and Vertical tails. We got these templates cut on Balsa ply in 4i lab. We then made the right part of the Horizontal tail using the templates. But, when we were repeating the process for the left part of the tail, we faced many problems and even after 5 tries, we weren't able to get a decent tail of the quality of the right tail. But, we came to know about the various mistakes we could do while cutting foam using the Gravity Cutter, which would help us later.
26/5 - Making wings using templates
We got our templates cut on Balsa ply in 4i Lab. We then used the templates to cut tapered wings both in styro foam and pink foam to start with. But, due to the change in our airfoils from AG-44 series to AG-40 series, there was differential tapering issue in our wing. Hence, to start with our cutting, we started making CAD drawings of the tails and decided that we'll first cut the tails using the Gravity Cutter.
25/5 - Designing Templates
We drew the CAD for the airfoils AG-44,45,46,47 , but it was advised to use thicker airfoils and hence, we drew the CAD for AG-40,41,42,43 which is a thicker class of airfoils. Also, we continued our practice of cutting using the Gravity Cutter. We tried several methods of cutting and selected the method which gave us the best precision.
Working of Gravity Hot-Wire Cutter
We had cut wing of different spans from both styro-foam and pink foam from the templates we had.This increased our perfection in working with it.we had tried rectangular wings,less tapered wings,sweep wings. Parallel to this we were also at our final stage of designing.we had selected Aegea 2m as our basic model.
23/5 - Gravity Hot Wire Cutter
We made a gravity hot wire cutter using the bow cutter we made the previous day. We also tested and optimized the gravity cutter in terms of amount of weight to be put and the placement of the weights. For this purpose, we tested by cutting 5 rectangular wing airfoils.
22/5 - Bow Cutter
We went for shopping to purchase the various materials needed for the construction of our glider. We also made a Bow cutter of 1.2 m length to be used in our Gravity cutter to be made later.