Nosecone

The Nose Cone is the topmost pointed part of the launch vehicle and is the most critical part determining the vehicle's aerodynamics. At the basics, its usually made of plastic or sanded wood and is usually one of the following four shapes.

Conical	Ogive	Parabolic	Elliptical

Of these, the conical is the easiest to fabricate but produces the highest drag and elliptical is the hardest to fabricate, and it produces a much lesser drag. The thing on my mind since the beginning was that the best solution was 3D Printing, which was a luxury back then. So I had to innovate with available resources (cardboard).

3D Model of Nose Cone	Manually assembled Nose Cone (shoulder not assembled)

A variety of solutions were thought of. Cutting out circles on cardboard with reducing diameters and placing them atop each other concentrically to produce the required profile. Easier said than done. Another method which gave some results than nothing was 3D Modelling the Nose Cone using a CAD Modelling Software and taking care to reduce the polygons to a manageable level. The reason for that being, after modelling and exporting it to a universal CAD Format (.stl), it is then imported to a paper modelling software, that automatically produces 2D patterns with clear guides and marking (with tabs) ready to be cut and assembled. If the polygons are more, the pattern produced will be complex and difficult to assemble. After assembly, the nose cone that is now fragile and hollow is reinforced by stuffing in crushed newspapers with glue. Though the final nose cone was somewhat acceptable, the time consumed was humungous.

3D Printed Simple Nose Cone

This was pretty much the scenario for a few years, though the design was simplified to a mere conical shape retaining the desired strength while considerably reducing the fabrication time. But once the 3D Printer Project was finally completed and we had a few machines that were up and running, our boundaries were limitless. All of a sudden we were able to fabricate nosecones with designs so complicated, they could have never been thought of through previous means. Below is one such example that was built for our final year project. Although the vent holes and fin structure may have carried minor significance, it looked way cooler and it was a breeze for the 3D Printer.

3D Model of a Complex Nose Cone	3D Printed Complex Nose Cone