I think we're watching Flyboys at home tonight (hee-hee!), but if so, Conquest of Space will be tomorrow night. I'll let you know how it holds-up in 2007, in a few days. Of course, when you watch stuff like this, you have to pretend you're six years old again. Michael, I'll certainly write up the scope article, but S&T doesn't seem interested in craftsmanship these days, for the most part. They want either projects made by clever adaptation of home-improvement center materials, with minimal rework, or digitally-related hardware. Best of all would be something made from off-the-shelf Home Depot parts, with a computer interface of some kind. Put encoders on that "Schidt-Cassegrain" and it's front-page material. But Gary Seronik's education is in art history so if I still have any influence there, it would be through his eyes. We'll see. Remember it's no longer partly-owned by the senior editorial staff, who sold-out last year. Rich, the clamp-ring master pattern is made from MDF, with a poyester primer-sealer overall, sanded smooth to 320 grit and spray-painted with a urethane enamal sealer over the top of that. Then a mold release is applied, up to six coats- similar to automotive paste wax. After an application of vinylester tooling gelcoat, the mold is laid-up over that in a conventional manner. Once that female mold is made, I can produce the actual ring pieces- and replacements or duplicates can easily be made, once I have a mold. There is no draft on the side that will get the felt liner, one-degree on the top side, to allow for release from the mold. Had I decided to cast these in aluminum, I would have had to at least triple the draft angle, and build it oversize to allow for shrinkage as the metal cools. We patternmakers have measuring devices called "shrink-rules". They are oversized ruler sets, with shrink factors built-in. Each metal has a different shrink-factor. For example, cast aluminum will shrink by about 3/16" per foot, so that ruler actually measures 24-3/8" long, with all graduations engraved on it appropriately lengthened. The patternmaker builds his pattern using the shrink-rule. It makes fabrication so much easier. By opting for a composite ring in this application, I could build the pattern with no shrink factor built-in, since the actual shrinkage for fiberglass is measured in the thousandths, and easily accomodated by the felt liner. Before Patrick gives me grief about using the English system, I have to say that the industry itself still uses it, so while I am fluent in both metric and English systems, I have to use what the industry uses or we have a Mars Polar Lander scenario. --- Michael Carnes wrote:
I'm hoping there's an S&T article coming out of this.
---Rich Tenney wrote:
Care to elaborate for those of us who are tool-challenged?
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