Fabricating an Innovative VTOL Aircraft Prototype for Elytron LLC

We, at Foamlinx LLC and WeCutFoam have collaborated with Elytron Aircraft LLC beginning of 2014 to fabricate their newly designed two-seater VTOL (Vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft.

This was a unique and interesting fabrication process for us and it would use to create a whole aircraft that can actually fly and be functional.

We created this modern aircraft prototype by cutting and machining Expanded Polystyrene foam using our large CNC hot wire foam cutters as well as our CNC routers.

Custom CNC Hot Wire Foam Cutter

Large Foamlinx CNC Router

The foam cores we created were covered by Elytron using carbon fiber prepmeg to produce this innovative aircraft prototype that is an airplane capable of taking off and landing as a helicopter.

We have started working on Elytron’s aircraft design early in 2014, while given 3D CAD files.

To create some of the parts we used CNC hot wire foam cutters, while other parts were machined using CNC routers.

Some parts were machined on a router as large as 16ft x 8ft x 4ft in size so that the parts could be made in one piece instead of in sections.

The machines used had a high tolerance of up to 1/16”, since the parts had to be very precise in order to fit together in the final assembly.

We created 52 different parts for the fuselage and the wings using high-density EPS foam (Expended Polystyrene).

The whole cutting and machining process lasted about a year, and was done in increments, starting in the Spring of 2014, ending in late February 2015.