During machine it was noticed that the wet lay up has, as large as 1mm, eccentricity. Even when the alignment jig was used to center the 3D printed plugs in line. Hence, up to 2mm extra outer diameter needed to be laminated so any eccentricity can be removed during the final machining stage. A stepped
I started out making a truncated gore pattern and a spray template out of cardboard. The template can be downloaded from here: 86mm Von Karman nose cone / spray template. The two A4 papers can be easily aligned with tape and secured to the 1mm thick cardboard with spray adhesive. You will have to fabricate
Alternatively to the foam plug I decided to try out a 3D printed plug for increased accuracy of my 86mm Von Karman composite nose cone. Initially this was due to the fact I ran into some inaccuracy / concentricity difficulties of the finished wet lay up of the foam plug (which in hind sight was not related
So it is time for a new rocket, a minimum diameter one. With this new rocket the need for a custom nose cone arises. After some consideration and positive builds by “cryoscum” on Australian Rocketry Forum I decided to make a foam nose cone with wet lay up. Just to test this principle as I