Carbon Fiber Ariframes

Hullo TRF,
I am a part of a group that is building a 6-8ft tall, 4-5in diameter rocket that will use a L level motor (or motor with an average thrust of >200lb*f). We are looking to make our own carbon fiber airframe and was wondering if guys could point me in the direction of some relevant info or instruction manuals on how to do this. Any help is greatly appreciated!!

2 words: Jim jarvis


jimjarvis150 on here.

Check this out:

https://www.rocketryforum.com/showt...article-PDF&highlight=carbon+fiber+jim+jarvis

If your plan is only to make one airframe you'd probably get off much cheaper buying direct from a vendor (unless you just want the experience and don't care about $s).

You could do this project in CF, but it may be cheaper and adequate to do fiberglass, especially if it is not minimum diameter.

Regardless, Jim Jarvis is someone to learn from with application of composites in rocketry.

Greg

Also,

If you have never worked with composites before, I suggest working with fiberglass first. Better to makes mistakes on something cheaper.

I just remembered that tfish and JohnCoker have some helpful videos on YouTube.

Greg

gatorguy63 said:

Hullo TRF,
I am a part of a group that is building a 6-8ft tall, 4-5in diameter rocket that will use a L level motor (or motor with an average thrust of >200lb*f). We are looking to make our own carbon fiber airframe and was wondering if guys could point me in the direction of some relevant info or instruction manuals on how to do this. Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Click to expand...

USLI team, amiright?

Jim Jarvis's articles show how it's done. theoretically there are ways it can be done better, but his vehicles have shown that his method is plenty strong enough, and the nice part is that his method is relatively easy to do compared to 'best practices' in industry, which can be quite difficult for an amateur to master.

I echo both sentiments that 'fiberglass is probably plenty strong enough, and much much cheaper" and "it's probably cheaper just to buy a tube for a one-off", but if you're USLI, you're probably trying to find excuses to burn through money anyway (which would be why you're flying on an L instead of J =p). Post a build thread! let us see what you're up to! =)

Edit: that's right! Tony has some great video tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/user/tfish38/videos?view=0&shelf_id=1&sort=dd