Talk Composites - The Forum for Advanced Composites

DIY Curing Oven help

http://www.talkcomposites.com/Topic25037.aspx

By janardian - 1/25/2018 1:17:58 AM

Hey everyone, Our college student club participates in the SAMPE Beam competition every year (http://www.nasampe.org/page/bridgecontest).
We've been using donated (and usually expired) CF/GF prepreg to make 24" long I beams for the competition. This year however we don't have access to an industrial oven/autoclave, and we are (desperately) thinking of making our own.
We have a fairly decent budget (not enough to buy an industrial oven ourselves tho). However we don't have a lot of hands on experience in oven making. Are there any good resources/DIY guides on that, especially one that caters to beginners? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

For reference the material we have has a cure temp of 250-300F. Since we'd cure our beams with tooling material (usually aluminum bars), we'd probably need inner dimensions to be at least 14" x 26" x 10". Power bills are not an issue since we use university resources anyway. An idea that was floated around was to simply modify and extend a regular kitchen oven and add heat guns for even heat distribution. Thoughts? Ideas? Thank you!
By KostasBiz - 10/10/2018 3:38:57 PM

 
Steve Broad - 3/27/2018 5:09:08 PM
 
janardian - 2/27/2018 7:25:19 PM
 
Michael Guilford - 2/27/2018 4:23:49 PM
bit of a late reply.
But  my curing oven is made from  100mm  foil backed insulation board. with a piece of tilebacker on the base for durability and heat distribution

I  have wired two 2000w heating elements in series to bring power down to 500w and use a thermostat to regulate temperature. You could also use a PWM controller to regulate power.

The fan motor is on the outside (would overheat inside). I use a tiny 12v van with a RC plane prop as a fan, connected through the walls.



Thank you for your answer! every bit helps!

Mine is made from ply sheet and 50mm insulation and silver foil. Heat is supplied by 4 separate circuits powering 150w bulbs. one of these circuits is connected to an adjustable thermostat, allowing me to control oven temps. Used an old metal desk fan with the motor in the wall :-)


 




Old microwave glass for viewing progress. Controls and wiring is a little bit Heath Robinson, but it works and I might tidy it up some day (probably not :-) ) If you look between the rows of switches you can see some of the remote temp sensors that allow me to check that I am getting an even cook.


Oven built to take front clip of my car. It fits, just . Photo has loaded sideways for some reason :-(





how it is called the internal silver lining and where should i look to find it ? thank you