Serenity - Feb 28 2007
Next Gen shuttles have the body and nose glued together and pins inserted under as mounting rods. They also make good places to hold the shuttles during painting
The front arrays being prepared for priming
One set of solar panels being prepared. Small bubble holes are filled and sanded. Edges are cleaned and thinned a bit
Prime the back side with Plasticote Sandable Gray primer
Shuttle is primed
As is the other one
Front side of solar panels are primed
A sanding stick is taken to the base to remove loos paint as well as roughen up the surface so the next spraying of paint will have something to stick to
It is surprising that some of the white resin casts are waxy and hard to paint while others are matt black and hold paint well. All I can think of is that the ratio of the resin is critical with how the surface finish turns out. I will have to do some experiments to determine which half of the resin mix is critical t keeping the results matt.
I spoke with the guy doing the moulds and casting for me and it looks like this weekend he will pour the mould for the body. He is not overly concerned with the complexity of the mould. He is worried about the large mass of the main body and the heat it will generate. This in turn heats up the mould and may decrease the life of the mould. It will also decrease the number of pulls a day. The other option is that once a couple of moulds have been pulled the castings can be used to make a top and bottom half. This would save a lot of resin during a casting but would mean the body is 2 moulds instead of one. The other downside si it can introduce slight error in the mating of the top and bottom halves.