Want printable size chart

A few years back there was available for downloading and printing an actual scale sheet of the many different size body tubes and lines for fin alinement. It had concentric circles on it and intersecting fin marking line on the thing. Does anyone remember where to get this if still somewhere on the internet ? It kinda looked like what I drew and attached here.

The only one I know of is for Centuri/Semroc size tubes:https://www.spacemodeling.org/jimz/other/pcf-15b.jpg
But it should be easy to superimpose standard Estes BT sizes on there with a compass and the BT dimensions from here:
https://www.semroc.com/Store/Products/BodyTubes.asp

Caveat - this is not the multi-size plot you were asking about, but there's a tool on PayloadBay here: https://www.payloadbay.com/index.php?page=Tools&action=FINGUIDES that will print a PDF fin alignment guide with a body tube circle and fin alignment lines for any single tube size that you know the diameter for.

On my OpenRocket parts database repo https://github.com/dbcook/openrocket-database/blob/master/data/tube_data.txt there's a list of all of the cardboard tube sizes that I've ever been able to find any information about. If you plotted all of 'em you'd probably have a black blob out to about 38mm or so.

I like the wrap around guides, many Estes kits have these that you cut out from the instructions then wrap it around the body tube and mark the tube at the fin and lug marks. Easy to make your own from a strip of paper, wrap around the tube. Measure it and divide it up into equal spaces for the fin lines.

Here's an idea: Print this out and glue to a piece of plywood. Find the center and drill a hole for a 13 mm dowel ( or glue a spent mini engine casing precisely in the center ). Then using spent 18mm and 24mm casings, you can center any size body tube up to BT-80 and any 13, 18, or 24mm single engine motor mount. The 18mm casing slips over a 13mm, and the 24mm casing slips over an 18mm, acting as adapters.

Here's a couple I made for myself--not totally exhaustive

EDIT: actually both files appear to be the same set of tubes, not sure why I have one with "_A" usually that means a revision. I will leave both here.

PayloadBay.com has all of this stuff, just not on one paper. I use it for every rocket I build. My 10'4" X 8" 55# Formula 200? Fins aligned with Paylodbay.com template pasted to a foam core board. Shear pin holes, screw holes, and AV ports? Wrap around from PayloadBay.com.

If the owner ever takes the site down, I will cry me a river.

How do you use payloadbay.com so that it prints for a PML 3" BT?? Every time I print out a fin guide, it prints much smaller then my 3" rocket tube.

gcanroc said:

How do you use payloadbay.com so that it prints for a PML 3" BT?? Every time I print out a fin guide, it prints much smaller then my 3" rocket tube.

Click to expand...

Make sure your printer is set to print at actual size. Adobe reader will try to shrink it to fit on the page unless you set it to actual size.

Check your printer setting. It may not be printing at 100% size

Thx for the help!!! I got it to work by using my Brother Laser Printer software, set on %100 and not printing through adobe. Thx again, back to the building board.

Geoff

The VCT tool, available here:
https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/black-powder-charge.142926/page-2#post-1880534
is a stand-alone program for Windows. Its fin alignment guide generator will produce end-view guides and wraps from the same input data, will tile prints for guides larger than a single page; also does canted fins or irregularly spaced fins. Preview the print on-screen and print directly to printer or to .dxf file.