Following up on the final design established last week, we once again began class by cutting out an appropriately sized piece of shrink wrap and began to crimp along the borders of the kite with a soldering iron. We then cut the model out from the shrink wrap and used the heat gun to tighten the material as evenly as possible, as seen in Figure 1.
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| Figure 1: The kite after being sealed using a soldering iron, before heat-shrinking |
Due to minor inconsistencies in the crimping and the lack of space left outside of the frame for the polyolefin to shrink, several edges of the kite frame ripped through the skin. Patches were attempted but were unsuccessful. That being said, the kite was still very much functional and proved to fly quite well in tests. The kite itself weighed 33.8g, but a substantial amount of weight will need to be added to the front to reduce the likelihood of stalling.
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