What is composites
What are composties? A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite) is a material made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties that, when combined, produce a material with characteristics different from the individual components. Thanks Wikipedia.
The material we get to work with is a canvas bag material or a potato bag material and a epoxy resin.
Making a thing
I decided to make a mounting for the nerf gun to move on the Z-Axis so that i would have a light as possible turret but since the base is a larger structure i went for that instead . The desinging prosess was all in Fusion360 and then taken over to Shopbot pathworks.
The file neede to be moddfied in the code later on so that the shopbot would have a set height so that it could opperate on such a tall material and not get a error if it would move too high into the endstops becouse there was about a 5-6mm space for it to move. also the z-axis was set manualy becouse of that reason.
The styrofoam was held in place with doubblesided tape then wedged down with wood plates wich were then screwd down in to the bead of the shopbot.
allways end the code with a reset back to 25 height. It roughed with a half an inch ballnose bit then finished it with the same bit and tweeked the offset settings fooling the programm that it was smaler so it could do the finishing with the same bit
The material layout
I planned how the material would layout on my desing cut the pices of the pices i was gone have on areas that would need stength like the spine of the feet of the base and center where a mounting plate will be afixed
It looks like the plastic wrap is stuck on it but that is just on the edges where the canvas bent under the mold and it got stuck there.
The results
My compostie was a sucsess there were only few wrinkles on the top layer wich means i should have cut more wedges out in it and folded over better but other than that it came out well.
I trimmed it with tinsnips at first just to get the most bulk out of the way for me to then later clean it up with a recipicating saw and a dremmel. photos of it will be with the photos of the final project, becouse i needed to fit some parts to it buy drilling and cutting holes in the top.
if idd be making a second version of it i would then cut most of the exsess material away with
then cuting the hole for the turret fittings with the lasercutter, also the material will be cut beforehand in the lasercutter.
More detailed photos of the bases final implementation can be found here Week 19
