Figure I will post this in engineering talk to get some feedback.
I am building a snowmobile tunnel and almost have my plug done and hope to have my mold done this weekend. I am now researching supplies on what to make the actual part from. It does not look like they use a core, but not sure what the thickness and layups are. Tunnels are usually under .080 thick aluminum sheet or .063.
I am looking to do something much like below:
I see a Soric core…
What kind of loads will this part see? Should you be concerned about impact toughness? Also, I assume you are infusing.
A good starting point may be 2 layers of 6 oz carbon on each side of a 2mm Soric core. I would rotate 1 of the layers on each side of the Soric 45 degrees to give you a laminate with similar properties in all directions. This laminate should be about 0.100 in thick and be about half the weight of the aluminum.
Thanks for the help!
It could see impact, but not usually strong enough to bend .080 aluminum. When a normal tunnel bends and stays bent something bad happened. I was thinking about using some kevlar carbon mix in the middle with the thought it could limp home after a bad crash. After reading and watching videos I think carbon does provide a little flex. I have reached out to others who have built these tunnels, but they prefer to protect there techniques. So I am still not sure.
The running boards I will be standing on and jumping around on, so those will always see under 300 pounds jumping around. The rear suspension will be mounted in four places on this piece. It needs to hold me and the sled (almost a 1000 pounds) from a 10 foot drop.
Will read up on on soric core. Need to make sure it does not hold moisture and I can drill through it.
I was not sure about infusion or vaccum bagging. I need to buy the equipment. I plan on buying a harbour freight vaccum pump. It is a 3cfm that has an ultimate vacuum of 25 micron/3 Pascal. I think infusion may be easier because I can lay everything in dry and not rush. I think wet layup and vaccum bagging may be easier because of equipment setup. I think the down side is vaccum bagging is wasteful, but strength and weight is the same. Have not done a ton of research in this yet and taking it step by step.
If you still need to learn to laminate, then infusion is the shorter route.
Looks like soric recommends infusion and I can take pictures of my setup right before to make sure I am doing it right. I am going infusion. Did not have a lot of time or good enought grit sand paper to finish sanding the plug tonight.
Well after a lot of sanding and bondo work I have my tooling coat on.
So I made it out of foam and put a lay of bondo resin and sanded. I then waxed it about 8 times with mequires mold release wax. I put three coats of PVA on. I then put on a two coats of tooling gel. Looks like it lifted a bit and got wrinkly in one spot. Should I send it now or fix the mold?
Making a grocery list for the infusion process.
I think I am going to cut out the bad part, put some pva on and re-gel coat it. wet sand those samll inperfections out of the tunnel.
Well, I would like to thank everbody for the help. I got it done with a bunch of issues mainly caused by my mold, but it was a great first experience. Thanks!
Oh come on now, no pictures?!