Inexpensive HPR Nose Cones

Anyone know a good place to get inexpensive HPR nose cones in various sizes? As far as I can tell, regular plastic nose cones run about $15 for 3", which makes them the most expensive part of a super low cost build I'm trying to do. Other than making them, is there anywhere to get them cheaper?

Nope.

The nosecones are expensive because they come from very expensive molds -- thousands of dollars to create the mold for that 3" nosecone.

Your best bet would be to make them yourself from stacks of pink or blue foam, then put a single layer of fiberglass over the top of that.

-Kevin

Plastic goblets (the kind you drink out of). They are usually available for the Christmas season. I have found them in sizes from 2 inch diam to 3.5 inch, in gold finish, clear, and red tinted. You cut off the stem, round off the stub, and blend it into the shape of the rest of the goblet. You will have to make your own shoulder and somehow attach it to the open end, but with a little work you can make yourself a medium sized $1 nose cone.

https://www.rocketryforumarchive.com/showthread.php?t=32092

m85476585 said:

Anyone know a good place to get inexpensive HPR nose cones in various sizes? As far as I can tell, regular plastic nose cones run about $15 for 3", which makes them the most expensive part of a super low cost build I'm trying to do. Other than making them, is there anywhere to get them cheaper?

Click to expand...

Just curious - why are you worried about a $15 part for a rocket that will cost more than that (much more if you count hardware) for a single launch?

This is for the rocket club at GA Tech. We are trying to get everyone to build a L1 rocket, and get them hooked by lowering the barrier to entry as much as possible. The way club funding is set up, we can pay for the cost of motors, but not for rockets themselves. We do have shared hardware for them to use.

When we tell people building a rocket is going to cost $50, a lot of college students simply can't afford that or don't want to pay that much. Personally I spend way too much on rockets and hobbies in general (I just bought a new [used] mountain bike!), so I'm not one to ask.

Cheep nosecone

For a TARC demo https://tarcday.b0x.com/ I wanted to use low cost parts that were very reproducible. To make the nosecone I bought wood balls from a lumber yard, McMaster has them https://www.mcmaster.com/#wood-balls/=91w8eo for $3 per ball. I drilled a 3/4 inch hole half way into the ball (think lolly pop) and glued in a wood rod. The rod gives you something to chuck on to, I turned down the shoulder on a lathe, it could be done on a drill press.

Looks really good, hemispheric maple nose cone, plenty sturdy for HPR, less than $5 complete.

Speaking of cheap nose cones, I have obtained very good results by shaping scrap packing styrofoam and covering it with paper-mache. I was completely blown away by how strong they become after just a few layers of paper. Once built up to the desired thickness/strength, finish with your favorite lightweight wood filler. If you want an even stronger surface, mix up some thin, slow-cure epoxy and paint it on.

The styrofoam is easily shaped with 24-50 grit sandpaper. Switch over to 100 grit and you'll get a nice smooth surface to apply the paper. With a little bit of practice, you can freehand a perfectly serviceable nose cone. The foam and paper mache sand so easily that you can easily turn them using a drill press as a makeshift lathe. While I have not tried it, an extra set of hands and a hand drill will probably work in a pinch.

There are two ways that you can chuck the nose cone for turning:

1. Make an adapter chuck using a piece of steel rod that is the maximum diameter that your drill (press) chuck will accept and approx. 5 inches in length. Cut two plywood centering rings to center this rod in your body tube. Mount this in a section of body tube approx. 6 inches long. The rod should stick out about 2 inches or the depth of your drill chuck. Wrap the shoulder of your nose cone with masking tape for a tight fit. If it slips, a hose clamp will secure it fully.

2. Larger cones will need support at both ends. In this case, you will want a wooden dowel running the length of the NC. Use two centering rings to support this in the nose cone base/shoulder. The dowel should extend 2" beyond the end on the base side to fit in your drill press chuck. The other end should extend roughly 1" beyond the desired length of your cone and be sharpened to a point at approx. 45 degrees angle. Use the sealed bearings from an old pair of roller skates, roller blades, or a skateboard to allow the tip end to spin freely. Make a small base plate the size of your drill press table to hold the bearings and clamp it to your drill press table. Raise the table to secure the pointy end of the dowel into the inner race of the bearings and lock it down.

You may run into problems if you use a soft dowel and tighten your drill press too tightly as this will gouge the wood and send things off-center. The use of a brass sleeve, slit with a dremel tool, should solve this problem but I have not tried that yet.

In any case, the cost to make these cones is essentially zero. You are looking at the cost of some glue and maybe a small section of dowel. They do require some time and effort, but along the way you learn a lot of the skills required to fab a Level 3 nose cone -- the only difference is the addition of fiberglass.

The best part, though, is that they can be made in any size, allowing the use of recycled cardboard tube cores thus reducing overall cost even further.

Roll your own motor mount tubes, cut your own fins and centering rings from 5.2mm luan flooring underlayment (ten bucks for a 4x8 foot sheet) and now you have a complete airframe for almost no cost.

I use manila file folders for conical nose cones. Sometimes I will epoxy and sometimes just soak in CA. You can also form cones out of the same bt material being used.

The least expensive and best quality nose cones for three and four inch are from Mercury Engineering.

I've used the fiberglass over foam route a few times for larger nose cones with good results.

For one foam nose cose, I started with a foam cone I bought from Michaels.

Once, I even used a lamp shade with a foam ball stuck on top. After a layer of fiberglass was added, it made a cool Titan-like nose cone.

A low-cost source for foam are the big sheets of insulating foam from Lowes or Home Depot. Rough-cut circles of decreasing size from the foam and glue them together in a stack. Then finish it down to the right shape as described by others in this thread.

For the shoulder of the nose cone, glue a coupler to the bottom.

I don't know if this is really right, but one thing I like about using fiberglass over foam cones is the idea that that if the rocket were to come in ballistic, the nose cone would crush and absorb some of the impact.

-- Roger

Crayon banks are a great source for cheap rockets. Includes nose cone.

Water bottles work fine for 3" rockets https://www.rocketreviews.com/reviews/all/scratch_twelve_pack.shtml I'm always on the hunt for plastic doohickies to use in rockets.

As mentioned earlier, cardstock/posterboard transitions can make good nose...or a whole rocket.