by oldtamiyaphile » Thu Aug 05, 2010 5:50 am
Curves are easy, being a thremo plastic you can make bends of any radius with a little help from a heat gun or heating strip (at the sign shop). I would design with this property in mind and you could get away with very few joins. For bonds I would overlap sections and rivet and use a flexible industrial type adhesive.
From my years of painting PC R/C car bodies, you certainly can get paint that sticks to PC. You can get little rattle cans with flex additives for the perpose. I did find though that some colours would flake off easily, while others seemed to bond to the plastic and the paint would well outlast the body. Painting with rattle cans would be expensive and fiddly, but you can get flex additives that are mixed into auto paint that achieve the same result.
Also note that if you use clear PC you can paint on the inside and even the worst job will turn out perfect, not to mention scratch protected. However, any frame work that rubs on the finish will make it's way through in short order and look terrible.
I like PC as a skin due to it's puncture resistance.