More from the Composite Shop.
I’ve got one ore two ideas I want to put on the car, but I want to experiment first. How to do these things are not on YouTube.
First the former. I will be using ABS to give me the shape I want, but it’s only 2mm thick, so how do I join it together. Tried super glue. Total failure. Tried acetone. Almost total failure. So I made up a slurry of scrap ABS and acetone and used that. Almost worked and with a bit of triangle shape as reinforcement, success. I think having it as a slurry it fills in any small voids from the sanding, giving more surface to bond.
Then to vacuum bagging. Due to its shape it has to be vacuum bagged but following all the rules on how to do this has given me mixed results, and I’ve never been able to draw more than 60% vacuum which is not enough for this application. Instead of using the approved bonding stuff (a bit like window seal stuff) I held the bagging down with the engineers go-to. Gaffa tape. Well what a difference. 90% vacuum and the bag pulled straight down, only a small leak from the vacuum pipe and I think I know how to fix this next time.
So it’s all sorted. Err, no. After running for about an hour the pump is to hot too touch and there’s smoke coming out of the exhaust port. The CF forum shows this is not unusual with Chineseum pumps, but industrial units are between four and five times the price.
I’ve ordered a fan and I’ve got lots of foam board to I’ll make up some ducting to blow cold air onto the pump.
I’m reasonably happy with the product I got out but I think I can improve on it if I can run the pump longer. The sample will be on test this weekend at Chetwind Park so we'll see how it performs before we go for the full scale bits.