Foamy Season is here - Milling Depron Foam -> A How To

[Matchless]

	Quote:
	hey, matchless, i think i remeber u, were you the one that leseberg flew the plane with the transmitter upside down in the hotel. i may be wrong, im not sure.

Hey WrongWay, I think I remember talking with you as well! Good to hear from you. Yeah, I took my Mode 1 transmitter, made some programming changes then Leseberg and I flew the airplane in the hotel lobby on Mode 2 with the transmitter upside down : ) Good Times!!!!!

[Matchless]

Finished up a couple more milling patterns for this particular prototype. Even did the 'wheelpants'.

[ChrisHays]

wow jeremy..you my friend are my new hero....this stuff looks like a machine did it...in--friggin---sane

[JZiering]

I just picked up a Dremel and router attachment last night. Got home and practiced a bit on some scrap depron. It's very easy, and doesn't take too long to do either.

A bit of advice - It's better to not cut enough away, than to cut away too much.

Here is a picture of some milling I did to a plane already put together. It's harder to do when the plane is already together... The next foamy I build I will mill out before assembling it.

(Sorry for the blurry pics)

[Matchless]

Nice work Jon!

Definitely easier to do with the parts flat on the board!

[madmax]

Awesome work Jer!!!! Thanks for bringing this to us!

[Donatas]

Matchless, Very nice thread! Thx for sharing, i may try this on new F3P plane, for AM i don't think there is need to go lighter than 130-140g. Main purpose for lightening indoor plane is to bring down speed in downlines in pattern sequence, level flight are also pretty slow even for 150g big monoplane ore 170g biplane.

One thing im not sure with such construction is long live of plane and strenght/rigid of construction, that will stay affter long transportation? Any experience with it?

[Matchless]

Thanks Donatas! I can imagine that anything you would do with this technique would be just as awesome as your paint jobs! I bet a milled Futurion would be pretty sweet!

As for the longevity, I honestly don't think it takes much away. I've crashed airframes that have been milled, and they seem to hold up just about as good as non milled airframes...... Maybe slightly less, but not enough to stop me from doing it......

Back to this method of milling, it has another benefit.... It is easy to take away a little more if you feel you did not take away enough. I always start conservative on the pattern and 'open it up' if there is room for more to be removed. That is the case with this prototype - I left a pretty fair bit of material in the fuse. However I'll take a pretty good bit more out for the next build......

[HuckinChikn]

I finally got my dremmel attachment and router bit...cant wait to get started on
this project!

[ckoerner]

It takes awhile to get the jig made. What ever you do don't make the jig out of 3mm depron. If you have a small gap between holes, it won't stay straight when you do a pass with the router and you won't get a straight line.

[Wojcigitty]

This is really smart, I want to build an F3P plane for this season and I plan on doing this.

Has anyone tried cutting all the way through, then covering it with something?

[Matchless]

Cody, I've not done the experiments myself, but every report I've read from others who tried found that it was not any lighter than simply milling carefully and leaving one outer skin.

Post some pics when you're done!