I have been flying and scratch building planes for years but using foam board and hot glue is completely new to me. After watching the FT Duster Review and Build i really wanted to try building one for myself. after picking up a stack of foamboard, I was able to get the building done in two short evenings. Once all the pieces were cut out, the assembly with the glue gun(aside from the burns) was actually pretty easy and fun.
I proceeded to spend the next few days covering the plane with orange and white covering tape. I opted for tape because i figured it would help keep the paper covered foam from becoming a soggy mess on wet grass. I just happened to have some left over tape from building a foam wing a couple years back but you can buy various colors from TapeBrothers.com
The orange and white tape looked awesome by itself but I wanted the plane to more closely resemble the Disney version.
I sketched up some graphics using a couple side views I found of the plane from the cartoon. The black, silver and white graphics were cut out of adhesive backed vinyl using a vinyl cutter.
The eyes were photoshopped out from a picture of Dusty I found online.
I originally hadn't planned on adding the exhaust pipes but after adding the black graphics; I knew I wouldn’t be able to get away with not having them. Using Solidworks I modeled up some simple exhaust pipes and printed them out on a 3D printer.
The 3D printed parts were sanded and painted silver. They were attached to the plane using a screw from the inside of the fuselage and a dab of hot glue.
I finished off the plane with a FliteTest Gremlin Decal. Had to give props to a great and well thought out design.
I wil l post a video of the maiden soon! I really enjoyed my first foamboard build. Im going to have to try building an FT Racer next!
Here you can download the files that i used to detail Dusty including the vinyl graphics plotter file and the 3D .STL file used to print the exhaust pipes.
Dusty's Exhaust pipe 3D printer file
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