Talk Composites - The Forum for Advanced Composites

Choosing my resin

http://www.talkcomposites.com/Topic1230.aspx

By Francois Moal - 4/9/2012 11:29:27 AM

Good morning
I need to mould some connection pieces for attaching a rotary brush to a water fed pole. I will use the carbon fibre sleeves to reinforce, but have no experience of the type of resin needed to achieve the best strength. I have done a test with Fast Cast and a thin polyester mat, and it seems successful. Fast Cast is quite liquid, and I find that useful. Would an epoxy still have the same, or approximately the same viscosity? The connectors have coarse threads.
Thank you in advance
Francois Moal
By Paul (Staff) - 4/12/2012 10:19:45 AM

Hi Francois,

Fast-cast is very low viscosity @ 50-60 mPa.s, the lower viscosity epoxy resins such as the IN2 is 225 mPa.s, however this is still very pourable and it works very well for smaller castings, and obviously offers much higher mechanical performance. In you application I'm sure that it would work very well, I would advise using the slower hardener speed as this will reduce the exotherm and result in a more dimensionally accurate final component.

Any fibre reinforcement that you can include into the casting will improve the strength greatly, also as the part has a thread I would also mix graphite powder into the resin as this is excellent at reducing friction and wear.