Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Building the Body

Building the body has become the most challenging task for our team. There are a total of 72 cross sections that needed to be cut out of foam and fit together. 

 In the photo above you can see the plotter sheets that were printed to used as a guide to cut out all of the sections. The foam that we chose to use is regular insulation foam that you can buy at any Lowes or Home Depot.
We used a jigsaw to cut out all of the sections. We found that this was actually easier and faster then using a band saw or any other machine for cutting. 

 In this picture you can see all of the cross sections loosely placed together after cutting was finished.


 The sections were glued together using liquid nails or epoxy and then clamped.


 Azim and Mike sanding down the nose of the plug.

Using straps, the remaining larger foam sections were glued together.

 We did however run into a problem with the sections coming apart. To solve this issue the outside of the foam was fiber glassed to add additional strength to the plug.

 The fiberglass was then grinded down to remove all the high spots on the surface.

 Here you can see the test plug and full size plug side by side.

 Multiple coats of plaster were used to produce a smooth finish.

Due to the amount of gaps on the bottom of the plug, our team decided to fiberglass this as well.

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