Curing oven with ~1m3 internal envelope

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#1

Hey guys,
I’m looking to put a proposal together for a customer and was wondering what the best composite curing oven in the ‘desktop’ class category. It doesn’t need to be very big at all really, less than 1 cb meter of internal volume is plenty large for me. Doesn’t necessarily have to be a ‘desktop’ oven but I’m just looking for something fairly small that I could work with that has a ramp controller. Vacuum ports aren’t even a necessity.

Do you guys know of any? Any manufacturers? Just looking to get pointed in the right direction, I really have no idea where to start concerning something like this

Thanks!

#2

I would imagine for an oven of the size you want, then a homemade one would be the best choice using that rigid insulation boards. Or maybe you could find a small powdercoating oven? Suppose it depends on how professional the oven needs to be/look for the customer.
There have been a few oven threads discussed on the forum. A couple of links I had left open from reading them the other week are -

1; http://www.compositescentral.net/showthread.php?t=6749

2; http://www.compositescentral.com/archive/index.php/t-3487.html

They is a suggestion about which PID controller you’d need to get the ramp rate. May be some other useful information there as well.

#3

I’ve gone with the build it yourself route using an Auber PID and foam board insulation from home depot, and while it definitely works I don’t like using it. If I’m going to be processing the amount of prepreg that I’m aiming to I’d like to have a real oven just to make sure things go smoothly and know that it’s reliable.

So far, I’ve found some decent ones that are about 2500 dollars from these two companies

http://www.despatch.com/

http://www.thermalproductsolutions.com/

TPSs Blue M ovens look pretty solid and I spoke to some of their reps about them. They look like a pretty good bet. Table top class, 1 phase 115v, full ramp and soak controller for about 2500, plus 300 freight. Considering going with it. 18x18x18 inch envelope

#4

If you can deal with a used one which may need a ramp/soak controller installed you might check here: http://www.hgrinc.com/index.do