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By the way, we all have Yann to thank for having come up with the name "Zepron". Before he suggested this the best I'd come up with was the much-less-satisfying "Gabe-pron" (:-)
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Gabe .... I love the foam, got some ideas and I should have a little building time in near future ....
Ed Couch (Tx) - (LiteStick-Meister Extraordinaire)
It makes a nice smooth and stiff wing with 60cm wingspan and 14.5cm chord ....It seems like Zepron is a bit softer and heavier than Depron, and much less "fibrous". Zepron is much more flexible than Depron: you can bend it with a much smaller radius than Depron with less effort (even compared to the bendable direction of Depron)....
in terms of stiffness for the same weight, Depron is better. But I think Zepron is easier to put into shape. It will be really cool to make tube-shaped fuselages with it (which you can't really do with Depron)....
Yann LeCun (NJ)
I put some pictures and information about a 60cm wingspan funfly made of Zepron at http://lecun.org/hobby/funzepron.html.
I tried it at the park today, and it flies great (11/13/01)
... I just made another 60x15 cm wing, but this time it's 100% Zepron and tape (no balsa, no epoxy).
It's flat-bottom airfoil with six ribs with 3mm Zepron. I held all the ribs together for sanding, then applied Blenderm on the outside leading edge, but no V-groove) and folded the sheet around the ribs while heating. The upper and lower trailing edges are held together with Blenderm. I then annealed (heated) the whole wing while holding it straight on the table.
The whole thing took well under 30 minutes. It's really simple. Very cool.
You couldn't do that easily with Depron, it's too stiff. (11/15/01)
By the way, we all have Yann to thank for having come up with the name "Zepron". Before he suggested this the best I'd come up with was the much-less-satisfying "Gabe-pron" (:-)
