josh1813

You should be able to do it, but I would recommend that you use a short piece of material (or just as long as you need). Polymers have a really strange property (I'll spare the boring chemistry lecture here) wherein the entire length of the material will have to be stretched a certain amount before you can control the gauge at any point. So that means if you place a much larger piece than you need in the oven that you'll have to work the whole piece before you can start to control in to the 3 mm you need. Also it will help if you keep the material near it's Tg, so I probably wouldn't turn t

Styrene's softening point is right at 212°F(100°C, not sure what part of the world you're from) so you have to have the water boiling, anything below that won't allow the polymer to "flow". But as it was said earlier, no flame....that's real bad. Josh

Andrew as far as the oven temp, you've got a pretty wide range. Acrylic has it's Tg at ~85°C (185°F), and this depends on the grade of the acrylic, but it's safer to shoot for the low end. The funny thing about a plastic's Tg is that is the polymer molecules begin to move around but not flow, which is a funny way of saying the polymer will bend but it won't melt. I don't think acrylic technically has a melting point but if it did it would probably be around 250°C (~500°F), but it will just get to hot to handle and probably too gummy if you go over 300°F. Also the polymer wil

Hair dryers don't quite get hot enough, a heat gun might, just make sure you keep it moving. Or if you can get use of the oven in your house and just set it to around 200°F and viola you got yourself an acrylic thermoformer. I find it handy to put a sheet of aluminum foil in the oven to keep the racks from causing localized heating on the rod and causing defects. I know you're thinking that it's counter intuitive to put plastic in the oven but as long as you keep it under 300, your in the operating range of the plastic and you won't melt it. With that being said, don't leave it unattend

I'm sure others can be more detailed, but on bombs live is denoted by a yellow stripe near the nose. On missles yellow denotes a live warhead on the nose and there will be brown stripes near the rear to denote a live rocket motor. Once again, I'm sure somebody can give you actuall FS codes and placement guidelines, but maybe this can help in the meantime....

Awesome!!! I've tried several times for the Texas ANG's with no luck....Thanks so much for bringing these back.

It's mail order...just got my second one from them...took about 4 days to get it. Josh

Guess the simulator would have been cheaper, but I don't think it would have been as much fun.....

Actually I once saw an interview with Ozzy Osbourne and he said the first substance he ever got high on was dichloromethane...so I'm not too sure about Hitler being a Tenax sniffer, but Ozzy is confirmed. Either way it inspired me to be more careful around the stuff.

Here's were I ordered my last run from. http://www.tapplastics.com/shop/category.php?bid=14&PHPSESSID=201112180753382087681930 Josh

I completely agree with Triarius. I'm thrilled I was just able to help with something for once, and was in no way meaning to make it sound like that was something everybody should have known. I'm glad there is people who still try to use caution and look for answers for stuff they don't know instead of winging it. Because as it was mentioned being a little headstrong with chemicals can usually wind up costing you loss of product or serious health problems. Even with my knowledge of the stuff, I usually go for store bought and pre packaged solutions just because I don't want the undisclosed

It could be, I was just betting on MEK, because it usually has a longer open time. But since some people have mentioned loving the language of love, or chemistry as I call it. Acetone is a ketone too, just like MEK. MEK is methyl-ethyl ketone, whereas acetone's more proper name is dimethyl ketone. The only difference is a carbon, and a few hydrogens. But they are basically chemically identical in this case. Sorry, I'll quit now. Josh

If I'm not mistaken Tamiya is mainly ketone based (MEK), and Tenax is dichloromethane, so although they are different it shouldn't be a problem to mix them. They are soluble in each other and to the best of my knowledge there are no reactions. I do it all the time when I'm cleaning glassware in the lab... Using the pure stuff that is, I'm not pouring bottles of Tamiya into beakers, that would be blasphemous. HTH Josh

Dibs on one. The Hornet book got me hooked. Josh

Thanks for the feedback guys...sometimes when I start in on plastics, especially PETG, it's hard to stop. And sorry about saying you were using flame, just reread back over your post and the brain must have got crossed up when you said you were putting the plastic in the frame. Hey I was just one letter off. Good luck with your future attempts, and if I can help anymore, just holler. Josh