Thanks man!
Just watched the vid
Know the product will put some info up for you tomorrow or Sunday bit busy at the moment
Contact Nick DiMeo at Competition Marketing (http://www.competition-marketing.com/WP/contact-us/). He will source it from Premium Resin Tech for you. This is the stuff I use and it’s fantastic: RDR6002/RDH6002 Tooling Dough.
Ok i’ll Hold off until I hear from you. Thanks!
I’ll hit him up if f1rob doesn’t have a lead. Thanks also man!
Right got a few minutes to myself so…
When you said “putty” the first thing that sprung to my mind was Araldite AV1580
Comes in two bars like plastacine but slightly stiffer.One Blue an one Yellow you cut equal amounts off each roll and mix them together.
Hard th do when you first start off an you really have to work it an kneed it but all of a sudden it starts to blend together an it forms a greenish putty that is VERY strong
Used for everything from sticking tooling bushes on moulds,making small moulds, mould repair an component repair
More of this stuff used in F1 than you would ever belive ! When the xxxx hits the fan an you need something quick it can be a God send
Can handle 135 reg cure at 90psi in a clave no problem.
But,once you posted the YouTube link I knew what you were after
Look on www.alchemie.com
What’s shown is Alchemix EP4350
That’s the main component
You also use gelcoat EP4062 and coupling coat EP4062c a very good system !
Gel up,make sure you leave it long enough. You want it set enough that you can touch it and it dosent stay on you finger an you should be able to leave a nice fingerprint in the gel
You then apply the coupling coat
Then the main component, we were doing 90psi cooks so we wanted a good surface Finnish or air bubbles popping an found it was best to put a thin coat on that really combines with the coupling coat Then the thicker coat
Can’t do a link but if you Google
RTN Elise race car
Look at images and you will see a one off Elise we did for the far East championship
Lot of the images come from sandsmuseam.comm
About the 25th picture that comes up is the car made of styling clay with blue doors
Click on that an it’s direct to the section of the sands site that details the build of the body moulds for the car that a friend and I did
All done with EP4350 and really shows what can be done with it
Want any advice just ask
I just found and read the build. That’s great stuff and exactly what I was looking for! I think the only thing I didn’t understand was they mentioned supporting with mdf board. Can you maybe explain that and typically do you want to do the perimeter and then cross the center section to give the mold strength to not twist also? I was thinking about some steel 1x1 tubing and then just epoxied on he back but cutting mdf is much easier then cutting and then welding steel.
I may try that zpreg also. I don’t have easy access to an oven and need to touch base with a company I can pay to use theirs so i’m trying to figure out the logistics of things.
Have you heard of anyone putting heater coils inside the mold to use out of autoclave prepreg? I wonder if it’s doable as long as the lamination isn’t to thick so it can reach the top of the laminate stack.
you can use resistance heating wire, or carbon fabric for heating. Definitely can get hot enough. Just need to design the mould well, and make sure the backside is well insulated to transfer the heat to the surface more efficiently. Probably find that making an oven, or buying one is simpler and more effective, but really depends on your project. We have made hundreds of heated moulds before, longest being 88m, so defiantly doable.
Awesome i’ll research that option also.
Any tips on how to design? I mean it’s about a 3 foot by 3 foot item that’s pretty flat. Any links you could advise? I figure also I could insulate the back with some type of insulation tape and cover the entire backside so it transfers forward.
Smooth-On makes a “Free Form” epoxy putty that works well.
you really need to put the heating solution in the tool laminate. It takes much more energy to transfer heat from outside tool surface to the inside tool surface and then into the part.
Yeah that’s what i’m Trying to research… do you have any suggestions on how to do this or links on specific items?
Sure, that would be about 1m2 of surface, if you use a 1ohm/m wire spaced at 20mm, with 220V you will have 968W/m2, at 4.4a. Alternatively you can use a 0.5ohm/m wire and achieve 1936W/m2 at 8.8a(9a is about the max this wire can stand). Benefits to using the lower resistance wire is the thicker, so less likely to break. There is many different resistance wires you can get, so depends on what you want to achieve in terms of ramp rate. Then all you need is a PID and SSR to control it. You can buy wire from Pelican wire in Florida. Good luck
I’m going to call them tomorrow and talk. Thanks!
I looked up briefly and it looks like it may work. Saves me from building an oven or having to drag my mold to someone else to cure for me. This is great news if things will work.
I’m looking at a Watlow f4 controller also since I’ve used them in the past. I guess the trick is to somehow set it up where I can run the mold safely and store it while taking the controller off without breaking or damaging it and move it to the next mold potentially.
The f4 is really nice, Watlow came here a couple years ago and demo’d it. Expensive though. You could literally buy a $50 cheap PID and it will do what you want. Guess it depends on the budget you are on
I called pelican and spoke with an engineer that was really no help. I need to give him specific things like how much I need. Are the same numbers you showed me above with the 1ohms wire going to be the same you recommend for a 5x5 mold also or 4x5 mold?
more area means your resistance will change due to longer wire needed. You need to calculate it. I only gave some examples.
So I ordered some type of fiber reinforced putty from freeman. Of course I didn’t test the stuff to see if it was compatible with poly gel coat and of course it’s not. It just kind of flakes off. However I’m able to make a part hopefully, keep the flanges on and now I can infuse a mold which will be pretty cool.
Any tips on this? I layered the part flanges all the way to the edge of the the crap mold, I plan to envelope back the part due to I don’t want warpage or the gel coat to lift off the flanges. I put about 3-4 layers of 6k carbon around the area.
After unmoleing and tossing that mold I plan to either buy epoxy gel coat, vinyl ester, or just use poly gel cost but use epoxy infusion resin and envelope bag the entire thing again just to get no warpage.
Does this sound like a plan? Has anyone used poly ester gel coat and epoxy infusion resin to make a mold and not have issues? Or should I use an epoxy gel coat. I’m having a very very hard time locating vinyl ester gel coat in the US
Epoxy and polyester dont play nice together, this is why Duratec is such a special product. You can use Duratec as a gelcoat if you’re in a pinch, I wouldn’t try any other polyesters unless they are specifically epoxy compatible. Thing is, a polyester gelcoat isn’t going to take the heat anyway, they are generally only good up to about 65 degrees. You need to make sure you are using products that have a Tg of at least 100C. Duratec has a Tg of 120, but I am yet to test whether it is truly compatible with the X-Preg - I suspect it isn’t.
There’s also really no point in using an epoxy for the reinforcement if you aren’t using an epoxy surface, as it is the surface that the pre-pregs have an issue with. If you used a vinyl ester gelcoat and an epoxy infused mould you would still get pinholes and you may as well have used a cheaper mould system.
If you have an epoxy infusion resin that can take a minimum of 100 degrees, then just get yourself some cab-o-sil and make your own gelcoat using the same resin. The mould won’t polish well so you will need to make sure your pattern has the desired surface finish, but other than that it will work.
On the run link you can see the backingboards in the sands pictures
We used msg as we were only doing 80deg cure
If it was 125/130 we would of used carbon boards
Use is two fold
1st is to support the mould in a uniform manner
2nd is when it’s removed from the pattern an turned over you have a flat stable mould resting on the floor/bench to work in
Sit your frame on foam or rtv so it isn’t in direct contact with the mould and laminate a “join” from the mould to frame
Z preg is old hat look at shd for material you won’t beat them
SHD are the business for everyone in Europe, but outside Europe shipping is just ridiculous. The shipping for a 25m roll costs more than the roll itself, and they won’t guarantee that the material will make it to me within its out-life. A shame, as I would really love to do more with their material.