ORIGINAL: Alex Voicu
ORIGINAL: NJRCFLYER2
Very impressive work on this! One suggestion for weight savings is to construct the firewall from 1/4'' cross grain balsa laminated with CF cloth. I use small dowels embedded in the balsa to create the mounting hardpoints. This is very strong and much lighter than a plywood, or CF laminated plywood firewall. The firewall I did for my Integral came out to 1.6 oz. You can do the same for the landing gear mounts. If you really want to save weight in the main landing gear mounts, I recommend studying how Wistmodel designed the Vivat, Prestige and Bravo. There's nothing else out there that I know of that is so light and durable as their system.
Thanks for the suggestions. The landing gear idea is very ingenious and i'll keep it in mind for the composite version. The wood structure was designed with a hard LG mounting plate and changing it would require a major redesign of the area.
For the firewall i need something that's 4mm or 1/6'' thick, so i don't have to modify other parts. Do you think CF laminated 4mm cross grain balsa will work or is it too fragile? Since i'm going to lasercut another firewall, i can test a few ideas.
4 mm end grained balsa laminated with carbon cloth on both sides is very strong. For electric, 3 mm end grain is fine. Vacuum bag it as Ed showed to achieve the best contact and highest carbon to epoxy ratio.
I also think this is nice work.
MattK