Senior Design at 100mph - Part 4

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After designing the plane and creating water jet files, the next step was to cut them out of plywood with the waterjet.

Waterjetting Plywood

This involved seeing good old John Tyler in the Rock Mechanics building. In the basement of this building is a machine about the size of two large skinny cars which is the water jet. A large pump creates high pressures of water which is fed through a tiny nozzle moving on two axises.

This machine is the sickest wickedest. It can cut through pretty much any material without generating much heat at all. It also does it with computer levels of accuracy and a great attitude.

After cutting all our shapes out, we had to let them dry and then just fitted them together. It was like those dinosaur models that you buy and slide and slot together. It was a lot of fun.

There was only one error in our parts, and that was in the main spar of the wing. The file had been made incorrectly and it was a quarter inch too thin. A quick shim fixed all our problems.

The foam you see underneath the plywood is there to give some backing and prevent the cut pieces from moving around too much. Those manly hands belong to John Tyler who did just a cut-out job at getting these parts printed.

Long shot of the Waterjet Machine

Cutting with One Part Already Removed

Cut Parts Drying

You can see from the picture of the parts drying on the table, how all those pieces are just dying to be put together with all their slots and grooves. Thats exactly what we did, and these next few pictures will show some of the process.