Hi All,

David Hathaway, the Paper Shipwright at http://tinyurl.com/4a4q67 and Digital Navy at http://tinyurl.com/4mypw5 have some models of ships that are free and some that are not free. Fiddlers Green Paper Models occasionally has free models but most of them are not. Go to their website at at http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/ for a picture of a card stock model of the Lockheed Vega that Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post used. Fiddlers Green has done something that most card stock model companies don't do by selling kits for card stock planes that can be equipped with tiny electric motors for free flight. Most card stock models have copyright provisions that prohibit copying or modification, so you would probably have to run this suggestion for converting their designs into foamies by the designers first. It would be easier to do with plans that are downloaded as pdf files, because they could be printed on paper of the kind used for inkjet transfers. The basic idea would be to do reverse printing so text transferred from special papers onto StyroSpray freshly applied to foam or wood could be read. Just imagine what the word "Titanic" would look like if I could pick it off of this post and flip it end over end. If it worked out, Mark and Trish might be inspired to develop some multicolor inkjet phlatprinters that cut and print.

Best wishes. Frank

 

Thanks for the links, frankmcneilll, especially for the fiddlersgreen one. That's a great site.

 

Hi Yoram, Mark and Trish,

I sent an email note to David Boddie several days ago to ask about the possibility for using StyroSpray to transfer to lift inkjet printing from paper. I had not received a reply when I started this thread so I decided to post without knowing if it could be done. A little while ago, I went online to read my email and found this reply:
"Hello Frank, Yes, StyroSpray seems to be working very well for foam aircrafts. Our product was used last year to coat a 3/4 scale Lockheed Electra prop plane for the Amelia Earhart movie.  We are currently working on a big alien space craft for the Predator Planet move (sequel to the original Arnold movie) but we cannot talk about the project at this time.
We have found something very interesting, StyroSpray will transfer images off a printed transparency.  If you go to the office supply and buy the transparent sheets of plastic used to print images for overhead projectors you can transfer off images.
I print the image using my desk jet printer in color, then I lay the plastic sheet on top of foam coated with StyroSpray. When the StyroSpray cures I can later peal off the plastic sheet and the image transfers on to the coated foam surface.  
Yes, we can harden card stock very well, our stuff is working great on paper and paper mache. We have a new video on the StyroSpray web page demonstrating the coating of paper construction. Works great, hard, no bubbles.

David"

Best wishes, Frank

 

Neat! I'm a bit fussy on how this would work, I guess I'm a visual kind of guy, but the idea could be really cool, depending on what one wanted to transfer, also it's good to know what this stuff wont stick to. I'll tell you this, for making vacuum forming molds, it's very hard to beat. Make your foam plug (using the pp of course ), coat w/ SS and you are ready to go! I used some PAM cooking spray as a mold release.

Attached files