8ft Zagi Sloper - DIY / Hot cutting / Fiberglass - MAIDENED!

thenated0g

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Got some work done last night and this morning. Video later.
I finished drilling the main spar holes out with a copper pipe, cut the carbon fiber tube to length, sanded it, and applied a ton of gorilla glue along the entire shaft and also drizzled some glue down into the foam hole as i new alot of the glue would get squeezed out as it was pushed in. Made sure that the line between the wing cores was even nose to tail and let set overnight. In the morning i cut it in half and was very happily surprised that the tape i put down pulled 99% of the mess off in one pull. Just some sanding/grinding to get the rod flush.
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I must have got close to the servo area as some GG leaked out of the foam. I didn't notice any deforming of the wing though, so that is good.
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While it was drying i grabbed a couple more shots with eletronics to get an idea of how they would fit. 4x 5000mah nimh cells will be the flight battery.
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thenated0g

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i decided how im going to do the wingtips, its going to be a vacuum bagged 'glassy' wing tip. composite layup. I want something thicker vs thin as plastic screws will go thru them into the wing so they can be removed for travel.

Starting from the center and working outwards on both sides:
carbon fiber cloth
6oz s-glass
Balsa sheeting
6oz s-glass

so with the glassy finish the visual effect should be glassed balsa

i need to order some mylar sheets, this is the hard'ish plastic that sandwitches the layers top and bottom and how you get the glass finish. Also i need to find a hard surface that will fit in my bag to give it the "flatness". Glass or some mdf or something.

be a good first "glass" project
 

thenated0g

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Vinyl arrived, I need to cut a square inch out and weigh it or maybe a square foot if that doesn't register. Take the back paper off and weigh it. Multiply that by about 3,800 as thats how many square inches i have top and bottom. Just to get an idea of weight increase, i guess i could just wait and weight it afterwards. Wrapping will be pretty much the last step.
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I ended up just taking a 3 or 4mm carbon tube and just pushing it thru the foam to make a tunnel for the servo wires. It went pretty straight, used some left over flitetest push rods with a hook on the end to pull the wires back.
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For the battery i have been going back and forth, should i have 2 cells in each wing? Should they all be in one wing? I decided to put them all in one wing and i will weigh the pack once its made and make an equal counter weight out of lead and put it in the other wing in the same place. So i used a hole bit to drill in as far as i could. The batteries will be stacked as shown below. 3 in the top and one below. This will leave me some room for a receiver and misc wires and a place to connect the server from the other wing when joined. Battery will be glued in place with epoxy sploog (epoxy and filler) or gorilla glue so there are no cavities to cause a break in a crash.
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There is a pretty good chunk of space in front of the battery. I'm leaving this for nose weight later. I don't know how much im going to need so i wanted to eave a good size area for a hole and epoxy/lead.
 

thenated0g

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Looks like standard brown Gorilla Glue; it has a slower cure time that the white stuff, making it ideal for anything that needs adjustments on assembly like this.
yeah thats what im used to, but what i had not done before, and did this time, was pour in a bunch of water, mix it all up, and pour the extra water out. This super kickstarted the foaming process. I was rushing and still it was foaming up a ton. Next time i will try a couple drops lol

Battery pack made. 5v 5000mah nimh. $13
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thenated0g

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I've heard that you can have problems with this but I've done it a lot of times with one 18650 and nimh and never had a problem. The way I do it is I make my soldering iron as hot as it will go and get in get out quickly you know get the solder down quick and then get the heat off.