Finally I had made my mold for build my satellite dish and I´m going to the second step,
I need to know if does exist any additive to Gel coat or polyester resin in order to reflect the electromagnetic waves or any suggestions for reflecting materials. Does anyone knows what the antenna manufacturers uses?. thanks
If nickel or copper blocks em’s then you have several options. None of them are additves to gelcoat though.
Here in the UK you can get various finely powdered metals, which are intended to be used to give a metallic effect to GRP mouldings, which can be added to gel-coat or resin.
Something like that may work, but wonder as sateliite dishes are available pretty cheaply, is the one you are making for a custom application that is very expensive, or hard to find?
Please let me know what options do I have with nickel and copper. Since I have tho mold I would like to try. I´ll appreciate any help
I tried with ALUMINA TRIHYDRATE but no results. Please let me know what else I could try. Thank You in advance
I only build race cars and auto parts…this thread is for you guys…(as I’m ducking down…)!
Dishes I have seen appear to be powder coated sheet steel, so it might be a good idea to have a look at one to make certain what its made from.
I think a composite disc is almost certainly not going to work as well as metallic one, so I would think very carefully before spending time and money on a project like this.
You can have it nickel plated. Almost all of our parts get plated (on one side only). And the process is gelcoat safe. There are only a hand full of companies that know how to plate composites. I believe its roughly $600 or so per part.
A cheaper method would be to use copper tape between layers (would weaken the part). Or you could look into EM protected cloth. And do the same thing as the copper. Lay it up in the part (possibley the last layer).
Might be even cheaper to buy a ready made satelite dish? Price of these is not a lot here in the UK…is it the same in the US I wonder?
Yeah its not cheap here either.
Heres the cheapest solution I can come up with, but, it will require some expiramenting.
Buy a nickel plating kit from caswellplating. Buy the highest quality copper spray paint you can (it must be REAL copper). Bead blast the side of the composite you want plated. Spray it with copper.
Then from there follow the instructions on the plating kit. Thats my theory on how these guys plate composites. And from the looks on some of our returned parts…the dip the whole part and protect none of it unless specified.
Might be of interest…guess that would be around $40!
I put myself through college by working in a plating shop.
You can do this two ways…
Buy some DUPONT METALIZER PAINT (or equivelant) or
Grind up some copper pipe…into fine dust…grinding disc or surfacing disk…and then mix that into some gelcoat so that its completely saturated with the copper. The platers use this technique with varnish to give the plastic parts something metal to take the plating.
We use copper powder mixed into the gelcoat for certain parts. Looks kinda cool too if using clear gel coat on carbon.
For parts that we need to block signals, an all carbon layup schedule works fine. Good enough that we made a trunk lid recently from 5 plies of carbon, and the car could no longer recieve GPS signals for the trunk mounted navigation system.
whhhhhatcha using? If you are making it out of graphite, you won’t need any reflective paint. CF performs just as well from 800Mhz up to 20GHz as a metal surface, as long as the mold is perfect.
If you want, just get 100x100 Cu mesh, do a layer of fiberglass, Cu mesh, another layer of fiberglass, and then graphite.
The only reason for adding a layer of metal is to guard against lightning strikes. The layer of metal will sheild the rest of the carbon material, and take the blunt of the energy. otherwise, it will be built up IN the carbon material and maybe explode. I want to see THAT testing!
How big is the dish you want to make?
Trust me, I know way too much on composite dishes.
I work for a Communications company who manufacturers dishes for many applications. We have been making dishes for US Miltary, Israel, Italy, Boeing, Lockheed, Bell aerospace and alot other companies.
You will need to spray copper lacquer or silver coatings on the dishes…You can buy these from Spraylat.
We make composite dishes and we always spray copper and silver on them.
The final coat we use is a antenna coating made by Triangle Coatings.Its from their Goldstone Series. You will find the info on their website.
Cheers,
Roy