I’m going to be laying up a nose cone later this year and it’s going to be involve vacuum bagging a part that is curved. I don’t have any experience with this and I was wondering if anyone had any tips or pointers.
Thanks in advance
Edit
Oh man. The title should read Fold Vacuum Bag around curves. I shouldn’t have written this while doing homework
haahaa!
Cones are going to be hard, because you will have MANY pleats. I can think of 2 ways of doing a cone.
1: envelop bag. Make a large bag, seal on 3 sides, slide your part in, (insert process steps here), and boom.
2: Place your bag on top of the tip, centered. Take four sides of the bag edge, and place them on the seal on the for sides around the base. You can do that to the corners as well. Now you have 8 folds around the base of the cone. Start cutting strips of tacky tape, and line the edges of the bag folds, and seal. It’s technique that you will need, and it will be hard, but it’s effective, and uses less bagging than an envelop bag.
of course, depending on your processing (prepreg, add your vent/transducer lines), (vartm, add your resin/vent lines somewhere/somehow), you will have to modify the above approaches.
I’m sure somewhere on youtube you can see step by step on how to make good pleats with your bag and tape.
This is where a silicone bag would come in very handy…
Even for just one, the perfect fit and quick installation justifies the cost.
I would just envelope bag it as riff said
Nose cone with canards?
I would probably use a thin stetchlon vacuum bag… envelope it. Stetch out all the creases in the bag so the creases are on the bottom side of the part , less noticeable if a wrinkle occurs.
Call and talk to Airtech International Sales Rep perhaps
or like TET said… a silicone bag.
I’m gonna try the envelope idea and see how it works out. Thanks for all the answers!