W14 | Composites





This week we are going to produce composite part. There are a lot of fiber glass machines for kids to play in gardens. So this week I studied how to make fiber glass. I made two objects this week. One I made with 3D printer and the other with CNC.


Personally I am a big fan of Game of Throne, so when thinking about what to make with glass fiber reinforced plastic, I decided to make a piece of fiber glass with the wolf shape. This is the piece I printed out, you can find the link on the right. And then I attached it to a piece of acrylic to make the final outcome more like a decoration.


OK! Time to make glass fiber reinforced plastic!

Prepare a few layers of glass fiber, make them into similar size as our model:


Apply one layer of resin on the wolf and then one layer of glass fiber, and then again and again. Totally I made 4 layers of glass fiber and resin.

And then I used vacuum bag to add air pressure to it and make it flat.



1 hour later, after resin solidified, the vacuum bag can be removed and here I got a strong piece of NEW material. How strong? I need to use hand saw to cut it into appropriate shape:


So here we go:



After this wolf, I made another one with the big CNC machine. Thanks for Fablab XH to let us use their machine. The second model I made with Antimony.



And then exported .stl for the CNC machine and machined it.


Same process as above, after applied resin, vacuum bag it.