assembly jigs

a380

New Member
hello all,

as i start my next model i have been thinking about one of themost frustrating problems i faced during the last project and ways to alleviateit. in a nutshell the issue was how to keep everything 'squared up' whileassembling very small parts. i found holding multiple pieces at the neededangle while gluing, a hit or miss affair at best, resulting in an often sloppyfinish. a simple example would be the triangular bulwark supports that have alip on the exposed edge. gluing the right angled strip, which in my scale was1mm wide, 6mm tall and made of .40 cardstock involved a lot of hair pulling! areally difficult part was the cable reel on the aft deck. gluing the bracketson both sides of the reel so that they were parallel and symmetrical took hoursand multiple re-do's. a not too clear picture is attached. hope i am explainingmyself clearly enough. i used tape, small clips, aluminum blocks (given by afriend who has a machine shop) to try to hold the shape while applying theglue. this 'jig' was the best i could do but things constantly slipped and ikept raking my brain to figure out how to lock the pieces in place while theglue set.

anyway what do you do in similar situations? whattools/jigs/techniques do you use? i would love some ideas. are there any jigsavailable for small scale work? micro-mark sells some jigs that are interestingbut they look too bulky for really small, delicate part. i am wondering if youhave come up with solutions that you created yourself and would like to share.there was a post about using a sand box to hold parts together a while ago.interesting idea that i am going to explore but again, i feel it's good forlarger assemblies like wings and fuselage of aircraft models. i have one ideamyself and that is to use lego bricks. i figure i can use the variety of piecesto make a specific jig i need and use the gap between the individual bricks tohold at least a thin piece of card. what do you think? i bought some bricksrecently and plan to experiment this long weekend.

sorry for the long post but hope to have a fun conversation going.i will try some other modeling forums as well and see what's in the knowledgebase.
thanks
 

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Z

Zathros

I used ZipDry glue. It has an incredible viscosity and if you touch the mating surface, you can see the strands of the glue matrix form. The glues holds fast, but is still positionable. it is the only thing I found to works like that. Unless one uses crazy glue which I won't any more for personal/health reasons. It is also the only glue I know of that glues plastic to cardboard

zip_dry.jpg
 

silveroxide

Senior Member
I am working right now on the San Salvador Galleon. It is a hybrid of paper and wood structure. I am in the process of making various jigs and tricks on making certain items for ship building that will come in useful for other modeling projects as well. I was going to make a separate thread on how to make them but if you do not mind, (your thread is already named for jigs) I would place those tricks in your thread if you do not mind. You can also make this an invitation for other members to place their ideas here as well
 
Z

Zathros

Jigs are models in themselves. I was a aster machinist at Sikorsky and my job was designing fixtures and jigs to hold parts so they could take the stress of machining. It is most important. I tend to use them only on objects that I absolutely need them. I find old books to work wonders. Jigs and fixtures can take much longer to make than the part involved.
 
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