Some advice needed on materials for modelling with.

[Guest]

Right, I'm after a type of modelling material as flexible as modmesh but significantly stronger and definitely harder to tear. Here's a picture of the model so far:

Picasa Web Albums - spenser.h.gray - Jetboil Mod

The model is just the mod mesh bit and it's meant to support the stove's burner and the pan/cup thing on top of that so it needs to be able to support about 1kg when curved round into a circle. It should also be waterproof.

Options that I've looked at so far:

Bacofoil Thick- Just not up to the job, much to flexible and becomes crushed under the weight of the stove and cup (with it folded over 3 times, mod mesh fixes this problem but then becomes very easy to rip).

Cutting out a paper template and laminating it, then cutting slots in it so that I can fasten it together like that (paper fastener could also be used, I'll get some A3 tomorrow from school and draw up a template, then borrow the art department's laminator).

Anyone got any ideas what material could work well here or indeed a method of making bacofoil work since I've got a huge roll of that!

I'm still at school and this is for coursework so anything a school might have is also going to be a welcome suggestion.

Thanks in advance

Spen.

[Guest]

Right, I think I've found a suitable material, Styrene, however Hobby Craft's stock of it was somewhat useless for my project as I need a continuous lenghth of at least 20"* 5" to be useful for the project. Does anyone know where to buy some from? It also gives me a brilliant excuse to use the school's new laser cutter! Also, I'm unsure what thickness would be best (it needs to be able to curve into a circle with a diameter of 90mm on the inside). The laminating method seems to work but just feels a little too flimsy.

Thanks in advance

Spen

[Guest]

Sorry Spen but I have no idea. Sounds like an interesting project though.

[Guest]

There are a few options, depending on which way you want to go. Firstly, try the Evergreen site Evergreen Scale Models as they specialise in styrene products. Secondly, think about using copper sheet which might be easier to bend into a cylindrical shape. Thirdly, take a ruler along to your local DIY shop & have a look in the plumbing section-you might find a length of plastic pipe that would suit, I'm thinking waste pipes perhaps? Could be a cheap & easy option cox then you'd just need to cut it to the length you need.

Patrick

[spanner570]

You beat me to it Patrick!!

Spen, as Patrick suggests, a piece of waste pipe is near enough the correct inside diameter (90mm) The o/d being 4" in old money.

I have just stood on an off-cut I have with no problem. I don't quite follow the stove bit but bearing in mind the pipe is plastic and there is heat involved then you could line the pipe with foil to help.

Can't help more than this as I can't visualise the heating part but I hope my (and Patrick's) pipe suggestion is of some use.

[Gern]

Hi Spen,

I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to do so this may not be much help. Halfords used to sell a range of car body repair kits. These consisted of sheets of glass fibre and a two-part resin compound which you mixed and spread over the glass fibre. Some of the larger kits had a metal foil mesh which you used as a sort of 'mould' to fill large gaps. You shaped the mesh which would hold its shape as it was metal, and spread your fibreglass over that. Or maybe you could use your bacofoil with some sort of resin mix to stiffen it.

Gern

[Guest]

Hi Spen. Your model is coming along great. If I get this right, you are making a prototype model of a camping stove that uses a jet burner? Is this a working model, or a visual model for context purposes? Now, the bit you are trying to make, the stand/skirt part, if it needs to be perforated, you could try Halfords (Ripspeed Round Competition Mesh from Halfords Price £24.99) as this stuff might look cool and should take the weight. It should roll up pretty easily and you could just fold a bit over to hold it closed. If you want to use styrene your school should be able to get you a bigger bit from their suppliers. We used to get it at uni in massive sheets. Hope I'm following you correctly. If I'm right and it is to be a portable device, you need to think of something that will be easy to pack away and carry. What does this mesh bit do exactly? Is it to cover a gas bottle? Keep the burner clear of the ground for airflow? If the part is just for show, consider whether you really need it!

Any questions just ask, your project is fascinating!

TonyB

[Guest]

Sorry for the massive delay in response, TonyB's pretty on the money, for some reason I didn't get an e-mail about the thread responses...

Basically the project is to remove the canister from under the burner so if it gets knocked over liquid gas doesn't go everywhere (it's part of an AS coursework project where I have to modify an existing product rather than make one from scratch).

The skirt is purely to elevate the burner from the ground as there's a length of bunsen burner tubing underneath it which runs off to one side and if it's not sufficient elevated it kinks. I ended up getting a largish sheet of styrene from a local model shop and got the design cut out onto it resulting in this:



That's the prototype which I'm going to take further on with testing and stuff, only thing I'm going to alter is the height and access to the control valve, two fairly small modifications.

The PVC pipe would be too large as it needs to fit inside the 1l pan that the cooker comes in to meet the challenge I was set by my mate (I needed a product to modify, he suggested this, it sounded fun and 6 months later here we are).

The copper sheet, hmm sounds like an idea but possibly too heavy/ easy to cut yourself on. I'll look into it as one of the ideas I like is being able to stick it straight into the ground.

Lastly the styrene just replaces the mesh, very similar design but with a slightly better fastener (paper fasteners, yay!).

Thanks for the help guys, I'll be doing a website detailing the build to a much greater extent over the next couple of months (as in when I get bored between exams).

[Guest]

I don't know how much you are taking this to a 'Reality' or 'Project'. However, speaking as someone who has used many designs of camping stove both static camping and backpacking, the two main features I have looked for has been control and stability. Sadly, they rarely come in the same package. The most stable cooking set I have used has been the Trangia meths fuelled stove where the casing of the stove resembled a pan on top of an upturned pan. The bottom one contained the burner which was a double walled well of meths with a drilled top rim. When the meths was lit, it slowly came to the boil creating jets of gas through the drilled lip which ignites and works like a gas burner. Very, very stable but little or no control.

The next best was the Cloman White Petrol (unleaded Petrol) burner which resembles a bomb. A tank of petrol sits below a standard gas style burner. The fuel pipe from the tank to the burner passes over the burner head so that the petrol feeding the burner is highly heated creating very high pressure petrol fumes to the head. Lovely stove, quite a weighty base so fairly stable as the tank had three swing out legs/feet which helped quite a bit. reasonable control except that the heat control knob was fiddly to get at when a pan sat on top so it became unstable while you were fiddling with it to turn it up/down, especially with gloves on. I am not to keen on tipping over a stove that works on the principle of boiling petrol prior to burning it in the opening of a tent while trying to make a cup of tea!

Perhaps the best compromise I have seen has been the separate gas/fuel container with a flexi pipe feeding a bare, apart from simple wind shield, burner supported on a folding bent wire stand. The best of these have the fuel control on the remote tank so adjusting it does not make the burner unstable and being low slung and easy to peg down, the burner with a pan on is quite stable.

Your modified design goes part of the way in creating a remote fuel cell but this is where the heat adjustment needs to be. The height of the unit supporting the burner is now disproportionately high given that it no longer has the weight of the gas cylinder to act as a semi stabiliser. I would think, as it stands in the picture above, that it would be very unstable as it is, with a pan on top being stirred by a cold gloved hand, I can see soup al over the place.

[Ian M]

As a user of a jet boil, I can not see the point in this project. One of the big features of jet boil is that it packs down into itself and when in use, is one simple unit.

Sorry to be a damp cloth but I just cant see it as being a viable alteration to an allready super product.

Never had one tip on me either.

But you deserve credit for the thoughs and effort.

[Guest]

Fenlander, this has to be taken up to a fully working prototype for the coursework, if it's got imperfections as long as i point them out that's fine. I've used trangias once or twice and had to teach several lessons on how to use them (bit of hypocrisy there, moved onto gas years ago but I know how they work), I had to evaluate various other stoves so I've had a look at the Whisperlite and a remote gas stove (can't remember name of it now).

With regards the height of it I'm looking at lopping a bit off the top of that ring anyway to lower it a bit and also to allow it to all fit easily into the pan (you have to push the burner in quite hard to get it to fit right now, taking 5mm or so of the top would fix that, I'll figure out what height the pipe needs to prevent itself from kinking.

The Jetboil recieves quite a lot of stick for its stability from the none converted among my friends although that does have to be taken with a pinch of salt as they are comparing it against hexamine cookers and MSR pocket rockets being used with 250g canisters (these 2 are staples among my friends as we're all cadets, Hexamine is free for us and pocket rockets and their clones are cheap and cheerful). However with regards spilling meals, well that's not a massive issue since I mostly use it for boil in the bag meals so I don't have to stir them, stirring soup though, surely due to convection the coldest stuff always ends up at the bottom anyway? Bear in mind that the support can be dug into the ground a bit fairly easily so the stability on soft standing is increased (I rarely find that I'm surrounded by hard standing when I need to use the stove so hard standing stability isn't a major issue but it proved to be fairly good still with a bit of a gain in stability on the side of the gas hose.

Ian, the point of the project is to make the stove generally safer to use/ be around, after a bad experience with mine spilling out liquid gas last year I'm all in favour of removing that danger hence the remoting system and all of my supports assuming that a remote system is used. The original challenge was to remote the canister from the stove.

With regards it all fitting into the cup it still does except for the hose and that section of the system can actually be curled up and fit inside the cup on the bottom if you have the time, if not just wrap it around the jetboil and it should come to no harm, all fits into the same size then, my requirement on size is for it to all fit into a PLCE webbing Utility Pouch which I've found it does with plenty of space to spare (this project is highly focussed on my experience of the stove and that of my friends who are into camping, this means that this is a suitable size requirement for them).

No need to apologise for being a damp cloth, one of the CCF contingent's officers gave me a mountain of stick about it before but he's not going to anymore because I'm not going to be the one who sets fire to a tree or something by accident.

[Guest]

Here's an idea for you. What if it stood on a strong coil? Like a car spring. The hose could coil round it (stopping it kinking?) and you might even be able to screw it into soft ground for stability.

I was keeping warm by a gas stove in our stores tent once and it tipped over, pointing at all the other gas canisters, leg it!

[Guest]

You'll know what I mean about lit liquid gas, it's bloody scary turning the thing off (mainly why football gets played with stoves doing this). A spring, now that's an idea one that could compress rather than expand obviously, any idea where I'd get one of them though? Nicking one from a car would work fine except: I have no car, I live nowhere near a scrapyard and a car one would weigh a ton. I like your suggestion though, I'll look into getting a lightweight one if I can find one. I've done plenty of models to get my design pages done I think so it's just a case of jabbering on about the various designs and models I've done for 7 pages of A3.