[project] Nothing To Do With 205's, But Behold!

[Bonzai 2]

Boeing tell us to weigh the cloth and measure out the resin accurately so that your not left with loads of excess after the cure. I'll try and remember to take a note of it later. [i never do it personally, just debulk it before curing]

[Bonzai 2]

yeah so officially the resin content of the impregnated fabric shall be 55 +/-5% by weight. So If your cloth weighs 45 grams, you need 55 grams of resin. Boeing then tells you to put the cloth impregnated cloth between 2 sheets of parting film and apply vacuum and then use a roller to get an even spread and remove any trapped air.

 

Of course all that could be (and most likely is) totally irrelevant given it'll be a different manufacturer's cloth and resin.

[M3Evo 0]

Awesome, cheers for the info dude!

 

I ended up working out the area of the cloth I had, multiplying by the weight and then adding a little bit so 0.7m^2 x 1kg/m^2 for the reinforcements is about 500g of resin. Added a couple of hundred for good measure just to be safe though

 

 

Been at a wedding most of the weekend so not got as much done as I'd have liked, but the good news is that the first trial of resin infusion seeeeeeems to've worked

 

Started off by extending the infusion mesh to the edges of the flanges and putting the vacuum channel in place:

 

 

 

Then run bagging tape around the flange too:

 

 

 

Before starting to bag the assembly. The bagging film was about 50% larger than the mold and this extra needs to be taken up with the pleats you see along the sides, otherwise it won't make full contact with the mold under vacuum:

 

 

 

Having got that far, thoughts turned to the need for a vacuum tight catch-pot. Cobbled this together using a length of 3" alu tube, two discs of ali, a couple of hose joiners and some jubilee clips.

 

 

 

It needed some hose connections on top, and something to stop the resin from sticking inside so, poured some PVA release agent in and gave is a slosh around:

 

 

 

And got on with machining the hose tails:

 

 

 

And after all that, it's time to connect up all of the feed and vac hoses and check for the many leaks there'll be

 

 

 

After the leaks are all sorted, you can infuse the resin and, before the feed pot runs dry, clamp off the feed line:

 

 

 

The process of infusing this molding which is 3ply thick and roughly 0.7mx0.7m took literally 5 minutes. It then took a further 3 hours for the resin to gel so I'd recommend mixing a trial batch of resin to check for gel times if you're doing this yourself

 

The scary part comes tonight where I take the part from the mold and see how it turned out! :eek:

[M3Evo 0]

Hmmmm, well! Some lessons learned!

 

First of all, you need to be absolutely sure the reinforcements have gone into all the corners or the unsupported gel will just break off.

 

Second, using wax and then a PVA release agent would've been a good idea as I had to wrestle this out of the mold and both the part and the mold sustained damage in the process

 

All the white areas are where the part has delaminated as a result of being levered at.

 

 

 

And the phone photo covers up some white areas on top where the reinforcement isn't in contact with the gel. It also disguises the cracks in the part:

 

 

 

However, chin up and all that! This was intended to be a cheap dry run and the part is still useful for checking fit under the bonnet.

 

 

 

A worthwhile experiment all told

[M3Evo 0]

Thought I'd have another quick go at resin infusion last night, this time on something a bit smaller:

 

 

 

Curiosity got the better of me this morning and I unpacked the bag, but didn't have time to try getting it out of the mold before going to work:

 

 

 

Also had a trial fit of the dummy cooler

 

If you squint, you can kind of imagine how it's gonna look when it's all done:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the massaging of my ego was over and done with, it was onto the more serious task of fitting the throttles again:

 

[miamistu 1]

Cool. does the bonnet still shut ok?

[speedy indy 0]

I envy your dedication !! well done....

[M3Evo 0]

These should've gone on yesterday, but there's a limit on how many pics you can post apparently

 

Cheers guys, the bonnet does indeed still close Measured that up veeeeery carefully!

 

 

 

Offering up the cooler:

 

 

 

And drilling some huuuge holes in it so I could measure for the trumpet lengths:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Away from tonight until Sunday unfortunately, but gonna have a good go at repairing the mold, giving it some more wax and also a coat of PVA and then trying again with the infusion

[Joe-Tait 0]

I love the custom carbon bits you must have alot of patience

[M3Evo 0]

Cheers dude, we'll get there in the end!

 

 

Have been having a back-to-basics play this week.

 

Made a very simple, 5 ply flat panel and was meticulous about sealing the pipes to the bag, the bag to the mold and so forth.

 

Not very wisely, I used surfboard resin instead of infusion resin. The surf resin juuuuust made it across the panel before gelling, but the end result is beautiful.

 

 

 

Also, started to repair the top part mold:

 

 

And have sealed the bottom half's molds together:

 

 

 

Had a measure of the finished flat panel to see how thick it is. Turns out that 200g carbon fibre compresses down quite a way, giving just 1.6mm thickness when finished. Think it's time to invest in some heavier weight cloth when the time comes to make the final parts.

[M3Evo 0]

Here's that little test card I did the other day:

 

 

Thinking I might cut a strip out of it and compare it to a strip of ali the same thickness to see how they stand up to some simple bending tests.

 

Also made some progress (again) on the mold for the top. Should get that done and polished tonight ready for release treatment. Gonna be 3 coats of wax and two of PVA release.

 

 

 

Then, gonna put the clear-coat in, but this time with a peel ply backing.

 

The peel leaves a rough, textured surface which grips dry CF quite well so hopefully I'll be able to get the reinforcement to stick into the corners this time

[M3Evo 0]

Have polished the mold!.....again!

 

 

 

 

 

Tonight, it's waxing and PVAing time!

[Gavin Waddell 18]

good work fella, quite a cool little set up you have, infusion is the way cheaper than prepreg, and less messier than wet lay up. i quite enjoy watching infusions.

 

i was wondering why you pva and wax your mold. your using two differnt release agents which if not compatible will cause problems in demolding. Are you using the pva as a pore blocker and then waxing on top. just use meguires gold as you are give it a good polish between coats plus its silicone free so no worrys when it come to give it a coat of laquer.

 

gavin

[M3Evo 0]

Tis much cheaper, although I looked at the prices of prepreg and wet layup carbon in epoxy and it came out roughly the same, assuming both were to be vacuum bagged.

 

The place I buy all my supplies recommends PVAing a waxed mold, just to make sure everything releases believe it or not. Have done it before on that boot lid I made and that "PUNG"ed out of the mold nice and easily

 

Trouble with just infusing and then clear coating is that there'll be no key for the clear coat surely?

 

 

Hooray! Actually managed to make something useful this weekend!

 

Had a think about where I went wrong with the last cooler casing and why the reinforcements hadn't pulled into the corners. To cut a long story short, if you have too complex a shape, you need to make it up of little bits rather than one big piece of cloth.....with one exception!

 

First off, stick down the outer skin. This can be in one piece as it's being held firmly in place on some cured but still slightly tacky resin (this is 200g / m^2)

 

 

 

Next, start filling the mold with smaller bits of cloth which need only go maybe 10-20mm around corners (this is 650g / m^2):

 

 

 

 

T'other thing I'd noticed was lots of air bubbles getting into the system, so came up with this method of sealing the bag to the connectors:

 

 

More tape is put on top of the bag and to seal the hose in place too.

 

 

And here's the result:

 

 

Very pleased with it indeed, especially the PVA release agent which meant the bare minimum of persuasion was needed to get the part to spring out of the mold

[M3Evo 0]

After a couple of false starts on the bottom half of the cooler, finally managed to get things rolling last night

 

Not sure I can be bothered to resin infuse this one, but might have a change of heart if I can find a little more time.

 

Last nights efforts were just to put a coat of heat resistant resin in the PVAd mold and then start putting the first layer of CF in:

 

 

 

 

 

Luckily, it's mostly hidden so the scrunched up bit of weave over the back there shouldn't be too noticable

[Dom9 2]

Is it just me, how come none of the pictures appear?! Bearing in mind we now live in Singapore, so it might just be blocking a server or something!?

[M3Evo 0]

Hmmmm, think they're working for everyone else Dom

 

So just for everybody else:

 

Toot-diddle-oooot!

 

TRUMPETS!

 

[hman205 1]

hows the bottom half of the cooler looking?

[M3Evo 0]

I've been farting about with it for about a week now!

 

Because the mold is in 3 parts, there's potential for air to get in through the joints.

 

"Right" thinks I "I'll put a bag round the bottom, doesn't matter if it bridges, and then seal a bag on top too"

 

Anyway, I connect it up to the pump and, after much creaking, the bottom bag (smirk) goes off pop...so that idea doesn't work!

 

Last night, thought I'd bag just over the mold joints.

 

This has worked to an extent, but it still only pulls 0.5bar of vacuum and this quickly falls away when the pumps off.

 

Plan tonight is to put a giant bag over the whole thing so that any little leaks pull the big bag down over the whole thing.

 

Fingers crossed!

 

What I learned from the initial experiment is that even the smallest leak will ruin a part, so actually double bagging it might be the way ahead for multi part molds.

[M3Evo 0]

Some more lessons learned these last couple of weeks.

 

1) Resin infusion and multi-part molds need careful planning. You have to be veeeeery careful to get the mold parts to seal together reliably.

2) If a vac bag bridges too badly, it'll go off pop!

 

On the 3rd attempt to seal the back of the mold at the moment, which involved bagging up as normal, realising it didn't seal, then bagging up the whoooooole thing. Seems to be working this time

 

In other news: To prevent myself getting bored with all the CF stuff, I measured up the sump and have ordered two flanges in steel.

 

I was gonna use the ali original sump, but it's gonna be a pain to weld and keep flat and so forth.

 

Also, it occured to me that I need a rigid method of mounting a windage tray, the pump itself, the pickups, inlets and outlets and all that kind of thing so one of the flanges will have all this gubbins welded on, and the outer one will carry the sump pan itself

[M3Evo 0]

Anyway, before getting a house and becoming all domesticated, infused the bottom half of the cooler casing last night.

 

Not especially confident as there were loooots of little bubbles being pulled through the mold, despite the two bags and sealed seams!

 

Next lesson is that multi part molds need to go in one big bag I think.

 

Here's all the stuff being loaded into the mold:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And it's all spending the day in my new, very high-tech curing oven today:

 

 

Otherwise known as the back seat of the car on a sunny day If it'll kill a dog, it'll cure a composite

[Bonzai 2]

Love it.

[M3Evo 0]

 

 

It's come out alright!

 

Was a bit nervous that being quite rigid, the part might not release from the mold, but it was a fairly painless process!

 

More lessons learned from these resin infusions:

1-Wear riggers gloves when releasing components as the shards of resin will tear your hands to ribbons.

2-DEFINITELY wear goggles when working on releasing a component from the mold! Things like the infusion mesh require a lot of force to remove them from the laminate in some instances with the consequence that when they do let go, they throw razor sharp scales of resin into the air. Was very glad of my goggles yesterday!

 

Anyway, without further ado here's the underside! The big patches are the PVA release agent and will peel / wash straight off:

 

 

 

And the inside. White strakes are peel-ply

 

[Dom9 2]

Pictures work at our new place - Sweet!

 

Looks like things are going well, mate! Very impressed indeed!

 

Keep up the good work!

[M3Evo 0]

did you feel like you'd been missing out?

 

 

Ooh, had a delivery yesterday!

 

Was surprised by how quickly these were made, and how reasonably priced they were too, considering some of the quotes I had!

 

 

So the next few of things to be working on are making my new flat habitable (it's a bit skanky at the moment) the sump, and also making up the internal structure for the charge cooler