The Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS) builds, designs, and launches open source amateur rockets. If you haven’t heard about PSAS before, watch my five minute Ignite Portland 2 talk and follow along with the sides.

Dan showed off the start of the nosecone mold today.

(Note that’s Ian Osgood behind the mold, not Dan.)

Dan had some issues with the mold coming off the wooden plug. He put wax on the wooden plug, but the mold didn’t come off very well and there were some wood chunks embedded in the fiberglass mold. He also had some problems with air bubbles on the edges, which will cause imperfections in anything made in the mold.

Dan is trying to avoid vacuum bagging it for some reason. He’s going to coat the plug with Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) next. That should make the mold slide off the wooden plug better.

Eh, it’s all above my head. Ask the airframe team on their mailing list if you have any questions.

Eric from the airframe team is starting at Insitu, which everyone things is cool (although the military aspect is not so cool).