Cutting carbon rods is a pain.

Compression cutters such as side cuts mash the ends of the rods, fanning out the fibers.

I’ve been using a little Dremel-driven abrasive cut-off wheel to do the job, but in the process it spews carbon dust, which is Very Bad For You.

The turtle-faced cutter pictured here nips right through carbon rods up to 1/8 inch in diameter, producing a clean cut with no squished ends. No dust, either, and it doesn’t take much pressure to lop through the carbon.

Small Shear. It’s a Xuron 2193 Hard Wire and Cable (HWAC, for short) Shear, available from multiple sources for less than $20.

In addition to snipping through carbon rods, it easily bites through music wire, the stuff we use for pushrods.

My preferred pushrod for the Wild Wings uses a carbon fiber rod with music wire fittings at each end. The carbon fiber rod is very stiff and light. The wire mates it to control horns and servo arms.

Control Rod Recipe. To make these, I cut a .070 carbon fiber center section. The music wire is attached with about 20 wraps of cotton-polyester thread. Hold the wraps tight and drip on some thin cyanoacrylate glue. When the glue sets, I seal the join with heat-shrink tubing.

Making these is a fussy process, but the Xuron shear substantially quickens the job.

Best part of all, it sounds like an alien menace: the Xuron HWAC.

Towering over the burning remains of its flying saucer, it roars metallically, “I will eat your carbon fiber!”

Tags: Tools, Wings.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 8:16 am and is filed under Elsewhere. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.