Dunstone just sent me a sample of their shrinktape, a very small roll to test. My problem is probably going to be heating the tape to 300+ f degrees once applied to the laminate. I guess i could use a heat gun but i’m not sure if the tape will relax after the heat goes away?
Tape shouldn’t relax, it should stay shrunk after heating. You can maybe throw it in a 300+ oven for a minute. the heat will shrink the tape, but the resin won’t get overly hot. Pull it out and let cure as normal?
I’ve only used the tape for pre-preg, but I HAVE flash cooked the tape at a higher temp than cure, just to get it really tight. Then I lower the temp and cure.
Fastrr - You can use heat guns, once that tape has shrunk it wont relax. Atleast the stuff I have doesn’t. What resin will you be using? I only use epoxy for my parts so that might make a difference if you are using PE/VE. If you are doing longer tubes it becomes easier to apply the tape and heat it up if you have some sort of holder, like a toilet paper/paper towel holder so the mandrel can be mounted and rotated. I’ve seen some people attach motors and a peddle that was an on/off switch then they just press down with their foot and the mandrel slowly rotates, making it even easier to apply the tape. Cause trust me, on long tubes it can be a PITA if your doing it by yourself. Here’s a tube that was a tail boom for a r/c heli I made.
So is there an easier way to do 4’ poles of carbon fiber? Also what could i use as a substitute without an autoclave? A regular cooking oven?
Don’t need an autoclave. Use the shrink tape and you are good to go. Now, getting the tube OFF a 4’ mandrel will be hard. make sure your mandrel is SOLID, not a tube, and fitted with some sort of pulling system. Like a hydr. jack, etc.
How many plies is that?
I have used heat guns with shrink tape to add wet laid epoxy carbon reinforcing to 5.5m windsurfer masts. Works well.
Making parallel tubes without some kind of known technique or hydraulics etc can be a big mistake. I just leave it to the professional tube makers to do it. There are so many to choose from and the prices are good so why bother I say?
One cool method I have heard of was to use old florescent light tubes, I think they may have wrapped them in a wax paper and then once their wet layup was cure they would just whack the tubes hard enough to smash the light tubes to pieces. These were not wrapped with shrink tape though, probably done with a long tape of peel ply.