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Fuselage fabrication methods

Subject: Fuselage fabrication methods
From: Graham Singleton <100421.2123@compuserve.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 17:11:37
>>Do the voids result from the foam sandwich material being 
pieced togeter where the material was ment to butt against the other 
piece or is the area ment to be a structural area?<<

I also kept quiet about this for the same reason. Most of the ripples I've seen
on the inner skin have been excess resin squeezed out by the vac bags. I haven't
so far been too worried by it, although it doesn't look too nice. On our
aircraft I've sanded off some of the ripples, then looked to see if the inner
skin had been sanded, had the glass appeared weakened I would have repaired,
just a 1 layer BID patch. In fact I did repair the inside top corners of the
cockpit module where the top of the fuel tank needs to fit snuggly. This is the
beautiful thing about composite parts, you can repair very easily without loss
of strength and only a slight ,if any, weight penalty.

So, if in doubt do a repair. Grind off the faulty area making sure you have a
good 20:1 taper (scarf joint) replace the glass layer or layers with the same
cloth and fibre orientation and sand the edges back to blend in.

The different appearance of the later fuselage mouldings is down to a change of
manufacturing team. IOW an outside supplier. IMHO the quality is better. But
then it would be wouldn't it. 20/20 hindsight and it's easier to kick the butt
of a supplier than your own.

Graham, hope that helps.



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