Bending styrene

Assuming your making more then one of the same part here are a few ideas without going into a lot of details. You can find more detail on these techniques by doing a search of this website.

You could vacuum form the parts but this require a vacuum form machine and a master mold, which can be made of clay, balsa wood or some other material.

If it’s a fairly simple shape you can build a master and support it on a “pedestal”, mount the styrene in a frame of shorts, heat it until it droops over a candle, stove or with another heat source, then pull it down over the master. With this and vacuum forming you may have to build the tank in a couple pieces and glue them together. I think someone posted pictures of this technique recently.

You could do a resin cast; I’m looking into this right now for a project I’m working on. This requires the casting materials and a master also. Did a web search and came up with a product called Alumilite, their website and a company called Freeman supplies has videos on casting parts.

For round items like tanks you might be able to wrap your styrene around a wood dowel craved into the shape of the tank, secure it with rubber bands and drunk it into warm/hot water to form it.

Be careful with whichever technique you decide to try because most require heat or chemicals.

The poster of this reply is not responsible for any injuries cause by trying these techniques. Results may vary.

If you are any good at carving, make a wood mold in the shape of your tank and attach a handle on top. Then wrap your sheet of styrene around your mold, securing in place with heavy rubber bands. Then dip the mold & styrene into boiling water for a couple of seconds. The boiling water will make the styrene take the shape of the mold. Just be very careful when you are doing this. Also you might find a pipe of the proper outside diameter to use as your mold - saves carving.

Another idea would be to build the tank like you would an old balsa and tissue model, using styrene in place of the balse - simply make formers of the proper shape and size and then plank it with styrene strips. Apply putty to smooth the seams between the planking strips.

The hot water method may work, I've got plenty of wood dowels in a variety of sizes I can probably use them to help form the basic shapes. I'll probably have to do them in a couple of pieces.

I think the F7F is going to cause me the most trouble that tank really sticks out from the fuselage.

http://www.warbirdfever.homestead.com/OOUTigercat.html

Thanks for the help.


As far as resin casting I've been playing with that too, but I don't think it would be worth the effort in this case since its mostly a one shot. I found TAP Plastic to be a very good source, my local store is even run by a modeler who was full of advice.