RCU Forums - NEED AERONAUTICAL ENGINEER FOR PATENT/PLANE/ENGINE DEVELOPMENT

RCU Forums (https://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/)

- RC Jets (https://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/rc-jets-120/)

- - NEED AERONAUTICAL ENGINEER FOR PATENT/PLANE/ENGINE DEVELOPMENT (https://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/rc-jets-120/1369402-need-aeronautical-engineer-patent-plane-engine-development.html)

RE: NEED AERONAUTICAL ENGINEER FOR PATENT/PLANE/ENGINE DEVELOPMENT

Quote:

ORIGINAL: stumax

Tony, it's not plasma spraying - I think that's a little more high tech than this. This is just plain old (VERY old) metal spraying. All you need to do it yourself is a spraygun with a big tip and an arc to melt some alum wire. Not quite as simple as that, but that's all the gun does. You can spray a foam cup with it, and as long as you don't try and coat it in one long continous coat, it won't even melt the foam.

Curtis, what was the diference in appearance between the metalmorphed P38 and Flitemetalled planes? The P38 looked good in pics, but then again so do most planes, esp when they have some shiny silver on them. I get the feeling the surface may not have been "fair" enough to look scale.

I don't know much about how the process..only that is was not new, and not exclusive.

What's the difference? Between the tape and this spray? It's very hard to quantify. It just did not look like metal...to ME. It looked like a metal-style EFFECT. And I suspect the surface was part of the problem...and that you will never REALLY get smooth enough, no matter how much elbow grease, to make this look just right. Something about how the stuff lays onto the fiberglass, and still sort of reveals the texture beneath, still looks like painted fiberglass. The layer is not thick enough to complete the illusion. One BIG disadvantage this particular model had was not having enough surface detail to "sell" the effect, so you end up with large flat areas where the flaws become apparent...given, you would probably have similar problems with flite-metal if you laid out a really big piece.

RE: NEED AERONAUTICAL ENGINEER FOR PATENT/PLANE/ENGINE DEVELOPMENT

It reminded me in a lot of ways of the old Hawk Authenti-plate models, the chrome plated 1/48 scale plastics from the Sixties. I have a bunch of them. They look awesome, but not totally authentic. And they have a big advantage of having a dead smooth plastic surface to work from.
I think flite metal(or the generic equivalent that people have readily sourced without the crazy markup) looks awesome. The closest thing to making it out of metal. Perfect? No, but as close as I have seen.

RE: NEED AERONAUTICAL ENGINEER FOR PATENT/PLANE/ENGINE DEVELOPMENT

If you go to www.alsacorp.com or http://alsacorp.com/chrome.htm you can find a newer process for doing this. It's very expensive to do, but the results are the best I've seen so far. It's actual metal that gets laid down. Process is simple, but like I said expensive. You would have to be serious about doing other models or anything to payoff the $7900 investment. I've got samples from the company and watched them on one of the Discovery channels applying to a car. They have videos on the website to watch the process.