Round Fuselage Ideas?

[RotateB4TheEnd]

Hey all,

I was curious if anyone had any ways to get a cylindrical fuselage made out of foam board.

I'm sure I could make a ton of score lines and get a pretty close shape but has anyone gotten a good shape without making a bunch of cuts?

My reasoning behind this is i'd like to take a stab at a swappable airliner. Most likely a prop driven aircraft (edf's are speedy and wouldn't be too scale.) A Dash-8 or an ATR-72 or something.

As school is about to start, I probably won't get much work done till Christmas break or over summer.

Any thoughts?

 

[eagle4]

I guess it depends on how narrow you're wanting your fuselage, my suggestion would be to remove the paper from the inside of your foam and you shouldn't really have too much trouble. If you can try to find something to roll your foam around, this will reduce any chance of creasing your foam. Perhaps you have a rolling pin, a shipping tube, a couple of wine bottles taped together. As foam is only about $1, I suggest just giving it a go

 

[brettp2004]

Not sure if this is what you had in mind...

Here is an article I posted about a B17ish scratch build I did. The fuse isn't prefectly round but might make for a good airliner type plane. You could always a few more score cuts than we did to get rounded off more.

 

[Tritium]

Not foamboard but Dollar Tree has some great plastic baseball bats that make a good fuse. The Short Fat one makes a KILLER GeeBee!

Thurmond

 

[bxrflip]

for my c-160 build, i just cut out a few circles from foamboard, removed the paper from one side of a big rectangle of foam board and wrapped it around the circles, spacing them 2 inches apart, i calculated the circumference of the circles and that's what
I cut the width of my rectangle to (diameter X pi)

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Check out the stuff that Chris de Graaff is doing on this site...

https://www.facebook.com/groups/404364279588296/

 

[tramsgar]

If foamboard specifically is not a requirement, why not try shrinking a bottle (or something else made of PET) to a round mould? Shrinking gives it the required strength as it grows thicker. earthsciteach had a fun video on that a while back. You could also paint its inside and I bet it'll look great.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Must view!

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1778464

 

[KFC]

Must view!

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1778464

This is how I built the 747, and also how I'm doing the B-52:

For sections that are too big to roll with my gut, I use this setup:

 

[xuzme720]

Awesome tip! That 747 looks absolutely phenomenal!

Welcome to our side of the web and if I may; I LOVE your famous bowls!

 

[FlyingMonkey]

KFC, I love the difference between your "join date" and the number of posts...

 

[KFC]

lol, I completely forgot that I signed up.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Well, you're certainly welcome to post whenever you want to. I really enjoy seeing what you come up with.

 

[xuzme720]

I'll second that, Fred! I'm still amazed at the lines on his 747fuse...

 

[KFC]

This is what I'm working on at the moment:

 

[tramsgar]

That looks fantastic!

Wish I had a gut... Or a couch. =(

 

[Craftydan]

Wish I had a gut... Or a couch. =(

Heck, I'd just be happy with a BUFF!

That's awesome KFC! A favorte airframe for me, and one of my dream builds. How are you planning on powering it?

 

[KFC]

This is just the prototype, so I'll probably use an e-flite power 10 outrunner and a 11 or 12 inch prop mounted on the back end. I'll probably load up a 3s 5,000mah lipo on the front end for ballast as much as anything else. This is really just a quick-and-dirty-let's-see-if-it-will-fly kind of build.

 

[RotateB4TheEnd]

That 747 is just astounding. I really feel like having just 2 motors gives it the right speed. Just wow.

 

[rcspaceflight]

I was curious if anyone had any ways to get a cylindrical fuselage made out of foam board.

I was just playing around with this and I'm thinking of writing an article about it. You have to use Dollar Tree foam board, remove the paper from both sides and then use some sort of tube to curl the foam around and then tape it in place. The bigger around it is, the easier it is. It's hard to get it to be a perfect circle, but from a distance it looks great. (You don't have to use a tube to form it, but it's easier if you do. A spray can works, if that's the size you want.)

I've made one as small as 2" diameter. Which is fine if it's only about 10" long. Just play around with it. I had a hard time getting the seam straight, for some reason. Also, I covered the whole thing in tape. Which doesn't add too much weight especially since you're removing a lot of weight by removing the paper from both sides. (Don't even bother trying to glue it.)