Bending a nylon roll cage?

[TITANIUM94010]

Can I use 3/16 nylon rods to make a plastic roll cage for a 1/10 project?
I can't really braze and plastic with screws is much simpler.

I've seen guys do it with styrene rods, but will nylon work? I'm just not sure how nylon bends, and wether it warps or not after bending.

Has anyone done this?
Thanks

 

[itr1275]

Can I use 3/16 nylon rods to make a plastic roll cage for a 1/10 project?
I can't really braze and plastic with screws is much simpler.
I've seen guys do it with styrene rods, but will nylon work? I'm just not sure how nylon bends, and wether it warps or not after bending.
Has anyone done this?
Thanks

3/16 is pretty small and I would think screws would pull out eventually. You might research nylon glues to fasten them.

For bending, I would get a heat gun and test it out on some scrape material out. If it has memory, which it might, you can try to make a simple jig and see if that helps.

 

[TITANIUM94010]

3/16 is pretty small and I would think screws would pull out eventually. You might research nylon glues to fasten them.

For bending, I would get a heat gun and test it out on some scrape material out. If it has memory, which it might, you can try to make a simple jig and see if that helps.

I think screws would be fine, but I am going to use some JB weld on some places.

The memory of the plastic is what I'm concerned about, but if I hold it in place it should cool down and keep it's shape right?

 

[QuesoDelDiablo]

The memory of the plastic is what I'm concerned about, but if I hold it in place it should cool down and keep it's shape right?

If you can get it to bend and hold it place it will stay if you get the temps just right and have it well fixtured to cool.

Nylon needs a lot of heat to surrender it's elasticity so you'll have to play around with your process to get it working the way you want and you'll likely need to overbend a lot of bends to compensate for some spring back.


I'd also second the motion on suggesting 3/16 is a bit small for screws, or at least use an M2 or M2.5 screw so you have enough wall thickness left to hold. Personally, I'd bump up to 1/4" rod.

M3 Screw
3/16in = .1875in
.1875in * 25.4mm/in = 4.76mm
4.76mm-3mm = 1.76mm
1.76mm/2 = 0.88mm WALL THICKNESS WITH M3 screw

M2.5 Screw:
4.76mm-2.5mm = 2.26mm
2.26mm/2 = 1.13mm WALL THICKNESS WITH M2.5 screw


So you can see that even with an M22.5 your walls are still only 1.1mm thick which is not a lot of meat for something that will getting the impacts that a cage does. Jump up to 1/4" rod and the 4.76mm becomes 6.35mm so the numbers work out much more favorably.

 

[HumboldtEF]

Szczerba bent up some tube in his recent build http://www.rccrawler.com/forum/1-9-scale-rigs/621594-szczerbabuilt-trials-truck-4x4-64-a.html.

He use Delrin and one big things to keep in mind with it is you do not want to use a flame or torch on it as Delrin has a unique ability to burn with a nearly invisible flame with little to no smoke and it wont self extinguish (I just read about this recently). I assume he use a heat gun instead.

 

[TITANIUM94010]

I'll be using m2 screws, I dont have a heat gun, so probably a flame or blowtorch for bending nylon.