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Thrifty Alternatives ..Building Foam Campers
Moderator: eaglesdare
Re: Thrifty Alternatives ..Building Foam Campers
by GPW » Fri Jul 28, 2017 6:41 pm
Just for Fun …. again ! https://youtu.be/ZiejAhol4Ps
There’s no place like Foam !
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GPW - Gold Donating Member
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Re: Thrifty Alternatives ..Building Foam Campers
by jim_manley » Sat Aug 05, 2017 3:16 am
Hello, my name is Jim, and I'm a Foamaholic ... 
Group: "Hello, Jim!"
It all started long ago on a laptop far, far away ... about six weeks ago in my time-space continuum, but on Saturday, August 14th, 2010, at 7:42 AM, in yours. Far, far away would be East of Glacier National Park in Big Sky Country, where air conditioning usually means you face it backwards in your window to pump the heat indoors!
I just finished reading from Page One to Page Four Hundred Sixty Six, and I sincerely hope that this won't bump the page count to Four Hundred Sixty Seven!
As some have noted, this isn't a thread, it's more of a Homeric Epic replete with a cast of real characters, a twisted plot so complex that an index had to be created (or is it the characters who are twisted?), and settings that span at least North America, and occasionally into The Great Beyond. I'm not sure whether it's an epic like those of Homer of Odyssey and Illiad fame, or those of the yellow Simpson of Springfield infamy.
There were many trials and tribulations suffered by Our Heroes, and I do recall there being The Bridge of No Return, which, early in my life I watched the second span being built from my humid, cold, and hot stone prison at MIT on the Severn (yes, I share the career status after a nautical life lived by Louella and He Who Must Obey). Poor Mary suffered at the hands of hooligans and criminals, Glen has a yard where trailers sprout spontaneously from the lawn (or whatever swamp plant life emanates from there), and Louella has a cute Foamsketeer teardrop trailer (TDT, in my three-letter acronym (TLA) abbreviated parlance). I could go on, but you already know that Louella never did try to steam out her Foamie's warts, Randy is still working out in the heat and cold of Idaho in lieu of his former shop (I'd love to come visit before the snow gets too deep - it is August, after all!), and many others are enjoying towing their Foamies, building them, or dreaming of Those Yet To Be
Since no one else has provided a reward to those most intrepid to dare read the entire Big Foamie Thread, I've taken it upon myself, in good Navy and Silicon Valley startup engineering (my second career) fashion, to create my own, to wit:
If anyone else wants one, let me know what to put in for the name.
I'm not new to building trailers, having fabricated about half-a-dozen of them for aircraft I've built, but they were all woodies. I've been very aware of the concept of lightweight yet incredibly strong sheathed foam panels for years, such as structural insulated panels (SIPs - a friend is having a house built using them in a remote mountainside location to which it's difficult to get heavy equipment), aircraft monocoque and composite construction, boat hull (and increasingly, masts and booms) fabrication, etc.
Soooooo, what do I have planned, you may ask? Well, a few people who apparently ferret through the posts by new members discovered my insane plan to build a 4 x 4 x 8 (H x W x L) very basic 2-inch foam based shell on a Harbor Freight 1720-pound trailer ... in a month so I could use it at AirVenture Oshkosh. I'd done some planning and acquired my trailer kit, but right before I could start building, I was informed by the local school district adminiweenie In-DUH-viduals that the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) classes I'd started teaching this past year (my third career, now in its fifth year) would no longer be offered as of the coming Fall semester because they were too hard for most of the students
That meant that, instead of completing my build and driving it to and from Oshkosh, I had to spend that time looking for another district that would appreciate my effort to help reverse the trend where our students are continuing to fall double-digit places behind even under-developed countries in STEM subjects proficiency.
While my schedule was blown to Smithereens (a small town in Kansas, BTW, but I couldn't find my schedule there
), I was able to keep thinking about how to build what I've known I want for years. Many here have probably heard of the Safari Condo Alto series of large commercially-built TDTs, and I'm planning on building something similar, but with some extreme twists. First, mine (which I've at least temporarily named the Corto - Alto means "tall", while Corto means "short" in Spanish) will be modular at the floor, wall, and roof panel level. That means that the panels can be towed strapped to the trailer and very quickly assembled into a TDT shell in various configurations - think of an Erector Set (now you know I'm An Ancient One) or LEGO concept of snap-together components 
My panels will be made with Polywall non-fiberglass reinforced plastic (NRP) cut sheets secured on internal, external, and edge faces of two-inch thick, 4 x 8 foot expanded polystyrene (XPS - blue Dow, in my case) foam sheets. Yes, I know that Polywall isn't UV-resistant, but the exteriors of my panels will only be exposed to UV for less than a few days a year, in toto, as I plan to shield them in an insulated tarp when strapped to the trailer and under a canopy when assembled in camps. I haven't settled on what will be used to secure the sheets to the foam panels, but Glidden Gripper, Great Stuff, or an adhesive that doesn't require evaporation to set are being evaluated through research of others' tests as well as some testing of my own.
I had originally planned on bolting the panels together, where bolts would pass through the thin dimension of panel edges, and then be threaded through the edges of panels into tee nuts set into thin, stiff, plywood or plastic sheet segments embedded into slots cut depth-wise in foam sheets. However, I'm now considering a much faster means of panel attachment using adjustable-pressure latches that would be placed on the inner and outer surfaces of panels. Initially, I may just assemble six panels in Glen's Basic Box configuration to allow early use and testing before I expend a lot of time cutting curves, kerfs, etc. Using that simplest assembly method would maximize enclosed volume and make for easy on-site setup
Although it's now overtaken by events (OBE), you can see my early thoughts about the Corto at http://www.tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=68753, which includes using additional panels to expand the Corto to upwards of a 6 x 8 x 16 foot (H x W x L) TDT shell on a base frame that would allow assembly over the HF trailer's wheel wells.
If you haven't already fallen asleep before now, you might have noticed that my verbose flag is set, and that's because I'm cursed by being not only an engineer by education and practice, but also a software developer, so I can type around 200 wpm without errors after slinging code for over four decades. If you don't enjoy long posts, I highly encourage you to settle into reading sessions with an adequately tall, cool beverage of your choice - if you don't make it through the posts, at least you'll have soothed your frazzled nerves before nodding off! I also try to be humorous, but as is the case with professional comedians, I bomb much more than I come up with truly witty repartee
In any case, I hope you enjoy the ridiculosity of my ideas as sources of mirth, if not admire them for their engineering beauty and possibly even ingenuity (Your Mileage _Will_ Vary!). Thanks for all of the inspiration I've absorbed in the pages en route here (especially all of the build pages) and if the old-timers don't have much to say these days, rest assured that I'll step up to fill the gap with my babble-ridden ramblings until someone "gets the hook" to yank me off the soapbox
All the Best,
Jim
Group: "Hello, Jim!"
It all started long ago on a laptop far, far away ... about six weeks ago in my time-space continuum, but on Saturday, August 14th, 2010, at 7:42 AM, in yours. Far, far away would be East of Glacier National Park in Big Sky Country, where air conditioning usually means you face it backwards in your window to pump the heat indoors!
I just finished reading from Page One to Page Four Hundred Sixty Six, and I sincerely hope that this won't bump the page count to Four Hundred Sixty Seven!
As some have noted, this isn't a thread, it's more of a Homeric Epic replete with a cast of real characters, a twisted plot so complex that an index had to be created (or is it the characters who are twisted?), and settings that span at least North America, and occasionally into The Great Beyond. I'm not sure whether it's an epic like those of Homer of Odyssey and Illiad fame, or those of the yellow Simpson of Springfield infamy.There were many trials and tribulations suffered by Our Heroes, and I do recall there being The Bridge of No Return, which, early in my life I watched the second span being built from my humid, cold, and hot stone prison at MIT on the Severn (yes, I share the career status after a nautical life lived by Louella and He Who Must Obey). Poor Mary suffered at the hands of hooligans and criminals, Glen has a yard where trailers sprout spontaneously from the lawn (or whatever swamp plant life emanates from there), and Louella has a cute Foamsketeer teardrop trailer (TDT, in my three-letter acronym (TLA) abbreviated parlance). I could go on, but you already know that Louella never did try to steam out her Foamie's warts, Randy is still working out in the heat and cold of Idaho in lieu of his former shop (I'd love to come visit before the snow gets too deep - it is August, after all!), and many others are enjoying towing their Foamies, building them, or dreaming of Those Yet To Be
Since no one else has provided a reward to those most intrepid to dare read the entire Big Foamie Thread, I've taken it upon myself, in good Navy and Silicon Valley startup engineering (my second career) fashion, to create my own, to wit:
If anyone else wants one, let me know what to put in for the name.
I'm not new to building trailers, having fabricated about half-a-dozen of them for aircraft I've built, but they were all woodies. I've been very aware of the concept of lightweight yet incredibly strong sheathed foam panels for years, such as structural insulated panels (SIPs - a friend is having a house built using them in a remote mountainside location to which it's difficult to get heavy equipment), aircraft monocoque and composite construction, boat hull (and increasingly, masts and booms) fabrication, etc.
Soooooo, what do I have planned, you may ask? Well, a few people who apparently ferret through the posts by new members discovered my insane plan to build a 4 x 4 x 8 (H x W x L) very basic 2-inch foam based shell on a Harbor Freight 1720-pound trailer ... in a month so I could use it at AirVenture Oshkosh. I'd done some planning and acquired my trailer kit, but right before I could start building, I was informed by the local school district adminiweenie In-DUH-viduals that the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) classes I'd started teaching this past year (my third career, now in its fifth year) would no longer be offered as of the coming Fall semester because they were too hard for most of the students
That meant that, instead of completing my build and driving it to and from Oshkosh, I had to spend that time looking for another district that would appreciate my effort to help reverse the trend where our students are continuing to fall double-digit places behind even under-developed countries in STEM subjects proficiency.While my schedule was blown to Smithereens (a small town in Kansas, BTW, but I couldn't find my schedule there
), I was able to keep thinking about how to build what I've known I want for years. Many here have probably heard of the Safari Condo Alto series of large commercially-built TDTs, and I'm planning on building something similar, but with some extreme twists. First, mine (which I've at least temporarily named the Corto - Alto means "tall", while Corto means "short" in Spanish) will be modular at the floor, wall, and roof panel level. That means that the panels can be towed strapped to the trailer and very quickly assembled into a TDT shell in various configurations - think of an Erector Set (now you know I'm An Ancient One) or LEGO concept of snap-together components My panels will be made with Polywall non-fiberglass reinforced plastic (NRP) cut sheets secured on internal, external, and edge faces of two-inch thick, 4 x 8 foot expanded polystyrene (XPS - blue Dow, in my case) foam sheets. Yes, I know that Polywall isn't UV-resistant, but the exteriors of my panels will only be exposed to UV for less than a few days a year, in toto, as I plan to shield them in an insulated tarp when strapped to the trailer and under a canopy when assembled in camps. I haven't settled on what will be used to secure the sheets to the foam panels, but Glidden Gripper, Great Stuff, or an adhesive that doesn't require evaporation to set are being evaluated through research of others' tests as well as some testing of my own.
I had originally planned on bolting the panels together, where bolts would pass through the thin dimension of panel edges, and then be threaded through the edges of panels into tee nuts set into thin, stiff, plywood or plastic sheet segments embedded into slots cut depth-wise in foam sheets. However, I'm now considering a much faster means of panel attachment using adjustable-pressure latches that would be placed on the inner and outer surfaces of panels. Initially, I may just assemble six panels in Glen's Basic Box configuration to allow early use and testing before I expend a lot of time cutting curves, kerfs, etc. Using that simplest assembly method would maximize enclosed volume and make for easy on-site setup
Although it's now overtaken by events (OBE), you can see my early thoughts about the Corto at http://www.tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=68753, which includes using additional panels to expand the Corto to upwards of a 6 x 8 x 16 foot (H x W x L) TDT shell on a base frame that would allow assembly over the HF trailer's wheel wells.
If you haven't already fallen asleep before now, you might have noticed that my verbose flag is set, and that's because I'm cursed by being not only an engineer by education and practice, but also a software developer, so I can type around 200 wpm without errors after slinging code for over four decades. If you don't enjoy long posts, I highly encourage you to settle into reading sessions with an adequately tall, cool beverage of your choice - if you don't make it through the posts, at least you'll have soothed your frazzled nerves before nodding off! I also try to be humorous, but as is the case with professional comedians, I bomb much more than I come up with truly witty repartee
In any case, I hope you enjoy the ridiculosity of my ideas as sources of mirth, if not admire them for their engineering beauty and possibly even ingenuity (Your Mileage _Will_ Vary!). Thanks for all of the inspiration I've absorbed in the pages en route here (especially all of the build pages) and if the old-timers don't have much to say these days, rest assured that I'll step up to fill the gap with my babble-ridden ramblings until someone "gets the hook" to yank me off the soapbox
All the Best,
Jim
Last edited by jim_manley on Sat Aug 05, 2017 2:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Education isn't the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- Plutarch ... or W.B. Yeats ... or ...
"In theory, theory and practice are the same ... in practice, they aren't!" -- Some Engineer
"Just when you think you have all the answers ... they change all the questions!" -- Murphy of Murphy, Dewey, Screwem, and Howe, LLP
What I'd love to build: ... What I'll probably wind up with:
.....
................ 
"In theory, theory and practice are the same ... in practice, they aren't!" -- Some Engineer
"Just when you think you have all the answers ... they change all the questions!" -- Murphy of Murphy, Dewey, Screwem, and Howe, LLP
What I'd love to build: ... What I'll probably wind up with:
.....
-
jim_manley - Teardrop Advisor
- Posts: 52
- Images: 61
- Joined: Wed Jun 21, 2017 3:20 pm
- Location: East Glacier Park, Montana
