R/C Naval Combat

What materials have been used to make hulls? Has anyone used Aluminum? I know of wood, Sintra, fiberglass. How about Kevlar?

There were pics on a hull with AL ribs floating around somewhere, Ive got a layer or two of carbon fiber over my ribs and parts of the hull to help add strength. One of the guys around me, Don, was looking at making parts on a 3D printer but the material the printer he has access to doesnt hold up to gunfire, if it could get it printed out of ABS it might turn out better, we have one at work but I dont think they will let me print boathulls on it.

Some one down in Aussie land made an HMS Terrible out of MDF. Needless to say it was not successful.

Read about the MDF, sawdust held together with glue and not waterproof. I have a few old hulls that are in that condition now. :)
With the carbon fiber, do you use regular epoxy?
I have been playing around with the idea of learning some metal work and cutting the ribs out of 1/4 inch aluminum stock. Issue would be getting the aluminum to bend around the bow and stern areas. I guess you use an english wheel to stretch the metal? There is a shop nearby that would tig-weld it for me. Then I would use spray foam and cover it with metal for the water channeling. The idea is to do this for a large BB and have it break down into separate pieces for car transport.

Yup I used West with the carbon fiber, works great.

you're talking about one hell of an $$$$ ship, just for the framing

kinda related does anyone know of how to copy an existing hull? has this been done successfully? i was thinking of using some large scale expansion foam and covering it in the stuff, taking the existing hull out of the foam and hey presto you have a coppied hull mold. do you think this will work? and does anyone know of a brand of expansion foam for this? i know there is one used in the states for fiberglassing sub boxes ect which is sandable and cutable i think its called polyaform?

Are you talking about making a mold from a wooden hull, or making a mold from a fiberglass hull?

from existing fiberglass hulls

in Aust i havent seen any wooden hulls i think its cause we are too lazy to build them and just order a premade one from our supplier

It's a very personal choice, that is for sure

Well... That really isn't something we'd condone, let alone promote, since the only purpose to that would be to make more hulls to sell/give away, which is in effect stealing from the original builder. He went to a lot of trouble to make the plug, then make a mold from it, and then to get all the materials to make the hulls. Last time that got proposed it got ugly, so I'd thank you if it got dropped at this point.

Lest anyone think this is legendary American uptightness, the Canadians (legendarily relaxed people) feel the same way about this issue, no small surprise since they are the fount of so many outstanding hulls.

Copying a hull would result (and has in the past) in a firestorm of ill will directed at whoever was doing the copying.

ok i see what your getting at i never had plans of copying hulls for sale, i kust want to copy my nelson hull as i screwed up the water channeling and am not fond of diging it up or paying another 250 for a new hull. but i get what your saying so dont reply anymore to tht question

How bad did the waterchanneling turn out? What was it that caused an issue, and what did you use for the channeling?

what did you use to make your water channeling? It shouldnt be a problem to grind out no matter what it is. I am a new convert to the concrete patch material as it works great, dries smooth, and fills in gaps. Justin has a thread for his tirpitz that shows how he did his water channeling with it. It was great in my case as I had to grind out some old material and didnt have to sand it perfectly smooth in order to mound the typical wood for the water channeling. You just build the outline and fill it in rough bottom and all.

Snipehunter,

I wonder if the 3d parts could be used to make molds for lost wax moldings for parts and other items in aluminum or brass

The materials from a 3D printer are not well suited to being molds for investment casting because they're low-temp plastics themselves :(

used resin fiberglass resin works really well but has the slight downside to it. i placed wiring in the middle of the channel when i resined it in. so effectively raised the base of my shit about 1cm not idea with displacement ect and since there was no molding for the gun placements im screwed on that front to. its possible to remove the resin with a lot of grinding but i think that a new hull would prob be faster to fabricate even if i need to make a new plug from scratch for it

quote:

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Originally posted by jadfer

Snipehunter,

I wonder if the 3d parts could be used to make molds for lost wax moldings for parts and other items in aluminum or brass

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I don't see why you wouldn't be able to use the 3-D printed parts as molds for casting wax parts to use if you wanted to do lost wax casting. But you could probably do it with a silicone mold which would probably be easier to make.

Maybe for aluminum, but brass has a much higher melting point than I'd think silicon would stand. Or would it? What's the melting point of commonly used silicones? (I'm glossing over several things like you don't have to melt the Si to make it deform, etc, I know, just looking for a ballpark number).