costarican_pilot

Hi peeps, Well long story short my cat had some fun with the plastic canopy. How could I get this repair? I thought of maybe using fiberglass? as some of you know this canopy come from a 1.60 reactor which is no longer available for parts. any tips or recommendations will be highly appreciate.

carlgrover

You could make a mold from balsa and a vacuum machine and pull a new one. I've done that several times and I can make halfway decent parts. Plastic is readily available and if you have a shop vac you can use that for the vacuum. The vacuum "machine" is nothing more than a box with the mold screwed down to it and a bunch of holes with a hookup for the shop vac. You make a frame and tape the plastic to it then put it in the oven for a few minutes then place that over the mold and turn on the shop vac. There are books/instructions around to do this.

You could also make a foam mold and fiberglass over that. Prime it then dig out the foam and paint it. The vacuum formed part is easier though.

Other than that, about all I know to do is cuss it.


carl

dbacque

My Feedback: (3)

One word ... felineocide!

Just kidding, I love cats. And when one of mine found out how much he loved to chew on the soft balsa nose and wingtip blocks, all I could do was laugh and find ways to store my goodies out of his reach. Ever see an uncovered wing tip with hundreds of little puncture holes but not one break? So funny!

As Carl said, vacuum forming is easily within the range of most any modeler. Take a look at this site http://web.archive.org/web/200701051...y/vacuform.htm It's old and dead but the WayBack Machine will come to your rescue. This is the source I used for my foray into vacuum forming.

My vacuum box is built from 1/4" ply, Masonite pegboard and 1"x1" strips. You'll also need a frame to hold the plastic, again I used 1/4" ply with some bolts and wing nuts as described in the link. And a rack to hold that frame in the oven.

The big trick is that you'll need to experiment with temperatures, heat times, material thicknesses and such.

Oh, of course, you'll need to form a plug. Canopies aren't terribly critical. If you can't put your parts back together enough to cast a plug, just carve something close from balsa blocks.

Dave

Art ARRO

My Feedback: (5)

Use Plaster of Paris to form a simple mold for the canopy. You can tape together existing canopy, if you have all the pieces, and glue them together with Canopy Glue (RC-56, Weldbond or equiv.) or CA. Sand the inside as smooth as possible and use a putty filler where required. Attach the repaired canopy to a luan ply frame at the perimeter edge using canopy glue or CA. Mix up the Plaster of Paris, invert the plug and fill it to the edge. You can also insert a dowel into the mix to form a handle once hardened. Pop off the repaired canopy and you now have a suitable plug for forming the replacement. As mentioned above, you'll have the experiment with temperatures, materials and thicknesses for the replacement. Good luck on this and I restrict felines from my shop.
Rgds,
Art ARRO

carlgrover

One note about plastic thickness; the thicker the plastic sheets are, the better it will stay in a formable state after you get it out of the oven and over your mold. I use 11 x 17 x .062" sheets. The thinner stuff will work if you have a commercial machine but for the homemade stuff, get it at least that thick.




carl

costarican_pilot

Wow guys thank you, all are great answers. I think I will give it a try with fiberglass. I will post some updates as I go along.If the fiberglass dont come out as I planned I will do one of the methods mentioned above.

Tom Nied

I can't tell what the scale is of your original canopy, but once I had to come up with a replacement canopy for my Radian. I used a 2 liter soda pop bottle and with some careful cuts, I was able to get a pretty good replacement out of it. And heck if you screw up, getting another bottle is easy.

I just looked up what a 1.60 Reactor is. My solution here probably wont help, you need some thing bigger.