02-25-2017, 09:18 AM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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If some variant of 3D printing technology can be developed for producing spiral-wound and parallel-wound (BT-30 type) paper body tubes (custom-size mandrels would be easy enough to 3D print), Estes, Quest, or smaller model rocket companies could produce and sell custom-diameter (and wall thickness) tubes made to customers' specifications, much as Semroc--before Carl died--made custom-turned nose cones that customers could design using an online template. (Smaller companies, I'd conjecture, would be more interested in making such custom body tubes than would mass-marketers such as Estes and Quest.) Also:
Another possibility for making custom-size body tubes might be a variable-diameter mandrel made of thin-gauge, pre-stressed metal (like the Viking Landers' soil sampler arms [and the booms that JPL designed for the "square rigger" solar sail for their proposed Halley's Comet mission]), which unrolls like a steel tape measure, then rolls up ("width-wise") to form a cylinder. A small (numerically few, that is) series of such variable-diameter pre-stressed metal mandrels might enable the production of body tubes of any size.
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