Hi Guys I think this is my first post, I've been meaning to play around with composites for some time and finally got round to it last week. My Neighbor wants a new drain cover and asked if it could be fibreglassed so I thought great a nice noncritical part to start with.
I have a vac pump it's not for carbon it is a Robinair (which we'll come back to) I ordered the Polyester infusion resin and sundries from Easy Comp and start to build the stack. I'm after a full encapsulation so I use a spray glue for carbon layup to hold the eglass in place then another layer of carbon fiber offcuts to make the top pretty (if flow coated later). I lay on the peel ply with the red strips and use a flow media which I found out was way to course and thus to fast.
The infusion seems to race across the top but does slow and make it uniformly to the exit. I'm concerned by the speed but when checking later the stack looks fully wetted out IE you can see down to the wood.
Debagging it reaks of resin so assume I under catalyzed, left it a day and tug on the peel ply it seems to come away from the wood so slowing investigate hoping..... but no it was a dud the carbon was only part wetted and the eglass even less, with no hint of adhesion to the wood only mechanical lock in the corns.
Round two:
Was the same but I used a finner flow media and the infusion looked to be perfect speed wise but you can see in the pics a white mottling, I take it that's a bad sign?
Theres no carbon in the last pic that's white paint underneath.
It looks way better to my untrained eye but that white is all over and thus once opened the glass was dry.
I know most would wet lay up but I really hate polyester smell and I wanted to make this work.
Is it the pump or is it because the inlet is in the middle of the stack and it's not going through just around? But every Video I see uses this technique.
I did do a nice easy test with carbon on glass using a three in one peel ply (worked loverly)
I now think it looks dry compared to the super gloss you would expect.
Big contact from the carbon this is the exit end.
Finer contact/more resin on the entre side.
You can see white mottling again halfway across (flow right to left)
Yes the bagging held vacuum before I started but I now suspect the pump may just not pull a full atmosphere?
What do you guys think?
I'm ordering a gauge now to test the full vacuum capability of the pump. (I had already but the spaz I spoke with put pressure gauges in instead)