Parts

Building has finally started in Earnest, this is the inner skin on the foredeck. +/- 45 3k with some reinforcement strips.






And the outer skin on the crew deck. One layer 4oz aluminized glass and one layer 3k carbon. The glass helps make the deck more durable/impact resistant for the riggers of smashing and jumping associated with trapeze use. I was hoping the glass would come out all pretty for a clear coat finish, but the weave is a bit wompy and streaked where the carbon shows through in spots. No big deal, I'll just paint it. Hope to get the nomex and inner skin on this weekend.





Bagged on the nomex, the center seam opened up a little, but I'll bond a new piece in when I bag on the outer skin, or maybe cut out a center strip and put in a piece of foam core (which is how I'm doing the fore and aft closeouts on this part). I'm not using over-expanded nomex, the reason for this is because standard cell is just stronger (smaller cells=more cells=better compression/tensile strength) and if you don't have too crazy a shape it forms pretty well.

shiney

After doing some test panels, I decieded to build a real oven. This new one has variable cook temps from 110-220f, so I can do anything from wet layup test panels to prepreg parts. Just waiting for a high temp convection fan and it'll be done. Has some panels in it right now, seems to work pretty nice. I'm close to being satisfied with my processes, so I should be laying up parts any time now.

Can you smell what the rock is cookin?

Finished up the pump manifold this week, it works. Still waiting for my new gauge to come in, the one mounted is from a scrap bin and is off a little (reads low).








Made a little cook box to do test panels in. its just a crappy cardboard box with some lights in it, But its good to 150f.




I got a sheet of nomex from Hexcell which I plan to use as the core on the crewdeck, foredeck, and internal structures. Here's a test panel (that's an aluminized glass face sheet), thinking of using some on the crewdeck with some clearcoat. Still messing with the layup, but its looking good.




Here's some 3k, I used a glass veil under the carbon as a bond layer with the nomex, it's a great bond and helped a lot with pinholes.



Wade and I spent the day infusing a carbon jeep hood. I havent messed with infusion much, it's definitely a cool process. Have to go pop the part in a little bit here, and we'll see how it turned out.

Pumped up.

I was hoping to start laying parts this weekend, but forgot about Easter so that was shot. I did find some time to get out in the shop and build a pump manifold. Its not quite done yet, but it is vac tight. Still need to take it into work and drill/tap some holes on the plug ends for vacuum line fittings and a negative pressure gauge.

I wanted to use my shop vac to quickly get the air out of my bags, so I mounted a ball valve and a vacuum cleaner port. Suck out the air, adjust the bag, then, just close the valve and turn on the pump. Takes a lot less time to pull out the air, and the high vac pump stays happy work wise.

The white box is a step up transformer, My Edwards is a 220v single phase, so this box does the wall voltage into 220 trick.