|
<Dan_Thomas_nospam@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1161905341.757408.214150@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
> shrike@cyberspace.org wrote:
>> Suprisingly I keep coming back to wood as material for mass production
>> since the whole of the structure could be made of one material. There
>> are obvious logistic benefits there, and I think most wood techniques
>> could be practically achieved robotically.
>
> Wood, especially good wood, is getting scarcer all the time.
> Consistently good wood is hard to find. It's the reason ladder
> manufacturers went to aluminum and/or fiberglass a long time ago. The
> big Sitka Spruce and other types of trees that gave us good
> aircraft-grade wood mostly went to build houses a long time ago when it
> seemed we'd never run out of the stuff. What's left is protected in
> parks.
>
The airplanes mentioned in the original post were, I am pretty sure, cold
molded - a very labor intensive process of laying individual strips of
veneer - each trimmed to shape - over a plug and either stapled of vacuum
bagged until the laminate cures.
But other methods exist to build wood stressed skin structures. e.g.
"Constant Camber" is a boat building method where full sheets of veneer are
placed in a somewhat generic female mold and vacuum bagged - the mold does
not have compound curves, but by changing the position of the layup, you get
different shaped panels that then can be assembled into whatever.
Another option is "tortured plywood" where thin plywood is forced into a
compound shape.
Amateur boat builders are also using a "stich and glue" technique to make
plywood hulls - I wonder how long before someone tries it for an airplane?
Or - consider a structure like a KR-2 - a plywood box with some sticks to
reinforce. Not a swoopy looking as a Mosquito bomber, but it works and it
doesn't require "premium" lumber
The hard part would be to come up with a reasonable replacement for the
spars in the wings. To avoid the big expensive spruce planks, one might have
to consider an engineered product like Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL)...
--
Geoff
The Sea Hawk at Wow Way d0t Com
remove spaces and make the obvious substitutions to reply by mail
When immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.
|
|
Re: Why no plywood monocoque homebuilts?
