Today we are starting a new D.I.Y. Project. This is a fairing plate that goes around the rudder and do the junction with the boat hull in order to minimize turbulences and drag. More performance due to our custom boat parts...
The following D.I.Y. project is a custom cnc and carbon fiber project for a pretty awesome high performance sailing yacht.
The design of the new rudder fairing plate is the next iteration of design improvement in order to reduce drag of the boat and increase performance. So far the previous fairing plate was more bulbous and did not look right. Therefore we have been developing with he design team a shape that will follow the lines of the hull at different angle of rudder and therefore minimize turbulences. Now we have a design it's time to build.
We have already manufactured the base plate, a 3mm thick C-plate cut to shape with the CNC to allow the rudder to go up and down and clear all the bearing bolts. We did that in a water bath. This is a requirement if you do not want a mess with carbon dust all over the place (bare in mind Carbon and electronic/electrical components DO NOT go well together) and also this increase precision of cut by cooling down the cutting bit.
The part below was made directly on the rudder offsetting the surface by 4mm in order to allow for sufficient clearance. This will be the internal wall of the fairing, This serve 2 purposes, it will give structure to the fairing with a boxing effect that will help minimizing weight and then will reduce the amount of water carried around which will be also a weight improvement.
And today we start cutting into the foam with the CNC. Let's start with the first layer. This require the most work as we still have the clearing holes. This will be treated in 2 cutting stages the first one is a rough pass in the foam than all the clearing hole will be filled with epoxy filler. To be precise and to not change any reference we will have to do the resin directly on the machine this is something I do no like to do (Risk of spilling resin on expensive equipment and curing time that block the machine for long periods even if we will use fast cure). The final cut will be done in the resin. This will prevent water to go in the foam by having a complete encapsulation of the foam.
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