Afternoon Fazer fans!
As some of you may know, I'm an aerospace engineering student. I am now in final year, and heading towards employment - God help us all.
I need some help with my final year project, and I wonder if anyone here can help.
For my final year project, I am working on a remote controlled aeroplane for an international competition: the BMFA Payload 3 Challenge. In essence, the team of four from my University have to design, build, test and compete a RC plane with a 2m wingspan, and carrying up to 4kg of dead weight payload. All powered by a single tiddly electric motor.
To me, the answer is obvious: make it out of carbon fibre. Thanks to my
placement, I can make carbon fibre parts and their moulds. However, we need patterns. I'm going to approach several firms to ask for sponsorship for tooling block, but my team needs a CNC shop who can mill the block for us to our CAD models as the Uni's equiment is simply too small. Just to give an idea, each wing will be just shy of a metre long, and will need 2 moulds (and hence 2 patterns) each. We're going for a radical aerodynamic shape with a
blended wing and body design, which means we will need comparatively fewer moulds for the entire aircraft.
What I'm looking for is a firm who can sponsor us with the CNC work. We need 10 patterns (8 if I can design the fins symetrically); or if the quality can be assured, and if each pattern can be made full size in one piece, we could skip the pattern stage and go straight to moulds - something that would save my team a lot of time, meny and effort for the same work done by the CNC firm.
If anyone can help, please let me know!
We're hoping to have the design finalised by mid November, so we'd be looking at around then for the moulds/patterns.
Likewise, if anyone can help with pre-preg carbon fibre, tooling block or fiberglass and high temp polyester resins, I'd love to know!
Thanks in advance!