Assignment #14
Composites

Introduction

This task was a hard one as it was my first time to such thing, after some searching I decided to go with epoxy to make my fiber composite part

• At the beginning I wanted to make a Guitar shape composite part but I thought of making a different thing
• I decided to make a large headphone dangler box, which is resemble a huge cup covering the head to the shoulder, and have an opening in the front, to isolate the sound between inside and outside the box


• I started to design my 3D mold in illustrator, as I want to combine the parts together to make the mold



Download File




• Unfortunately I faced two problems while doing this task, the 1st that our Laser Cutter got broken so I had to wait for it to be fixed, and the 2nd that i couldn't find more than one plywood sheets after we fixed the machine and i couldn't buy one as all the stores are closed because of our Eid which is a religious holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, our Islamic holy month of fasting
• Button line I had to change my design so it would use only one sheet of wood to do the job, and so it be :D




Download File




• Cutting the mold with laser cutter




• and here it is :D



• I find out that I forget to make a lower support for my mold, but as I run out of wood i used some scraps to do the job



• I wanted to use the Epoxy as i mention before, but again all stores are closed, so i decided to use white glue as I have a big bottle from it


• I added some water to dissolve it, 1/3 water and 2/3 of glue, and started to mix



• You keep mixing the solution till all the glue dissolve and there will be no solid glue in the mixture


• I used gauze fabric in the composite
• I didn't now at the beginning that in composites i had to cover all the mold with fabric before i started covering it with the glue, so i had to do it all over again after i started


• I started socking the fabric in the solution and then put it on the mold



• After I left it for 2 hours, i come back to find that the first layer have been hardened and ready to add the second layer



• I left it for 7 hours to dry, and I came back to find it like this




• Adding more overlapping layers



• I waited for 16 hours for it to dry to remove the mold






• Here is the final result :D



• As I forgotten to make vacuum compaction to the old composite, I had to start all over again to make it
• I decided to make a simple bowl design



Download File




• I converted the .stl design into interlocked sheets using 123D Make software
• Take care to enter the board specs before the converting process in order to get the right results




Download File




• cutting using the laser cutter



• here how it looks alike after assembling



• I covered it with nylon bag in order to prevent the resin from sticking to it and to easily remove the plywood after


• I used 100% cotton fabric pieces and epoxy resin




• I used the vacuum cleaner to complete the vacuum bagging



• I mixed the epoxy with the hardener in 2 to 1 ratio and started the steering process




• I covered the fabric with the mix and started to overlap them above the mold






• Time to make the vacuuming process
• I used a small sealed nylon bag, connect the vacuum and turn it on, as you can see it sucked all the air and completed the compaction process





• It was easy to separate after it got dry




• I cut the edges to make it even and here it is