Assignment 12


Composites


Design and make a 3D mould (~ft2 /30x30cm), and produce a fibre composite part in it


Learning outcomes:

Have you answered this questions:


The composites ...

To this assignment I recycled the mould done on the Molding and Casting exercise and found this tutorial to vacuum a bag without a vacuum cleaner.


So, after gathering all the materials, I first proceeded to wax the mould with the "Mould Release Wax".


The epoxic resin at hand works by mixing 75% of resin and 25% of hardener, so I used 12gr and 8gr of each. I poured both on a disposable vessel and mixed; curiously the mix felt more liquid that each of the parts.


With the resin mixed, I first tried to place the textiles on the mould and then pour the resin ... but it didn't work well, so I opted to wet the textiles beforehand and then place them on the mould. I pushed the textiles as much as I could against the mould, but it felt that some bubbles were inevitable due to the mould's geometry (was to step and had some intrincate parts).




Then, I placed the whole thing inside a Ziploc plastic bag and proceeded to the vacuum technique shown on the video above, which resulted better than expected ... at some parts it seemed to have bubbles, but when verifying they didn't were. Anyways, I decided to also place a bag filled with water on top of the mould to have some extra pressure ... now to wait for the results.




After around 9 hours I checked the resine and it felt stiff, so I proceeded to unmould it.




During the process of unmoulding I realized that it wasn't really dry, so I took care of (successfully) not tug much the composite. So finally I got a nice Alien collection, wood, silicone, gesso and underwear ...