Commercial Balsa Nose Cones

I was always wondering how commercially manufactured balsa nose cones were made. I've Googled for videos with a number of search criteria, and still only get the friendly lathe guy turning one. I'd like to see how the industry does it. Does anyone know of any links that show how they do it?

Back in the day, they would have been done with a tracer lathe. I know semroc had custom built CNC lathes that Carl designed and built himself. Other companies likely do the same.

Similar process to Baseball bats, gun stock blanks, and wood fishing lures. I have seen video in the past for all of them. So there are videos out there.

Thanks. Using "CNC" in my search criteria made all the difference. I even saw a better turning tool for my on purposes.

Some use the pencil sharpener method.

I had birch cones made for BT-5, 20 and 50 by a local company that makes wood turnings ("Automated Wood Turning"). Typical products include chess pieces like pawns, the pegs in a coat rack, gear shift knobs, etc. I paid for the tooling and they either created a special cutting blade or a master that was then traced (I never went in the back to look), but for the pointy cone (copy of CMR Ogive) they also made a pencil sharpener tool to grind the end to a nice point.

I have not re-orderd in a while but I still have a bunch of cones. Slowly depleting them making club kits. I used to use over 1000 a year making kits for my wife to use in school programs.

balsa and birch are different. balsa has fine sand sucked up into the wood and eats tooling (from what I have been told - assuming that was true.....)

FSI had pine nose cones. Is the new FSI making similar cones again? Will they be at NARAM? Will Bob get the scoop at the Manufacturer's Forum?

shreadvector said:

Some use the pencil sharpener method.

Click to expand...

Now, I have seen what appeared to be a mis-shaped nose cone with light cutting grooves like it came out of the "pencil sharpener" too early. I ordered 3 of the same cones and one was a 1/4" longer than the others and rough cut. This gave me the opinion that commercial cones were made by some type of speed carver/pencil sharpener type of machine. Didn't see any in my video search though.

What about Balsa Machining don't they do balsa??

I visited Semroc and Carl demo'ed his nosecone set up. it was a CNC type controlled lathe that used a dremel as the cutting tool. The surface was a little rough, so he would hit it briefly with a little sandpaper while still on the lathe and it turned out nice and smooth.

The whole set up was inside a wood box with a hinged plexiglas lid. The box was connected to a dust collector outside. Not a bit of dust inside the room. It was a very slick operation. As I recall, there were a couples of the lathe set ups and a CNC laser cutter for sheet stock, perhaps a couple of other items. Tube cutting was in another room based in a lathe with mandrels that fit every tube size they sold.

He also showed me his motor making machine, including samples he had made. I think he was toying with small runs of "boutique" BP motors, like what might be used for competition events.

He was like proud poppa showing off his facility. He and Sheryl made me feel like family straight off.

Sorry, I didn't take any video.

Don

A real shame on my part. I live 3 hours away from where they were and wanted to boogie up there to see the place. I even had a theory on how they could improve their paper embossing for the models that got them. Mars Lander comes to mind.

fulldec said:

I visited Semroc and Carl demo'ed his nosecone set up. it was a CNC type controlled lathe that used a dremel as the cutting tool. The surface was a little rough, so he would hit it briefly with a little sandpaper while still on the lathe and it turned out nice and smooth.

The whole set up was inside a wood box with a hinged plexiglas lid. The box was connected to a dust collector outside. Not a bit of dust inside the room. It was a very slick operation. As I recall, there were a couples of the lathe set ups and a CNC laser cutter for sheet stock,
Don

Click to expand...

Randy has the Semroc equipment set up the same way.