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DIY Curing Oven help
DIY Curing Oven help
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janardian
j
janardian
posted 7 Years Ago
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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!
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DIY Curing Oven help
janardian
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7 Years Ago
Super easy to build an MDF/Fibreboard oven that easily handles 400F. This is the build thread I posted for mine: http://www.talkcomposites.com/21047/MDF-Curing-Oven Ive been using it virtually...
Hanaldo
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7 Years Ago
Thank you so much!! looks really cool, and 2 years is amazing durability-wise! Would you have more details on the build/schematic? I'm asking since we're pretty much going to build this from scratch....
janardian
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7 Years Ago
It's pretty straight forward really, just 16mm thick MDF supported with 45mm pine on the insides and 45mm aluminium rectangular bar on the front. The support is important as the mdf will sag without....
Hanaldo
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7 Years Ago
Awesome, Thanks!!!
janardian
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7 Years Ago
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.....
Michael Guilford
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7 Years Ago
Thank you for your answer! every bit helps!
janardian
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7 Years Ago
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....
Steve Broad
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7 Years Ago
That is a really cool and interesting way to do it!
janardian
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7 Years Ago
how it is called the internal silver lining and where should i look to find it ? thank you
KostasBiz
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7 Years Ago
Hey everyone, thanks for your tips and suggestions! We are making some progress with the oven, but are stuck at the oven fan part. What model/ fan would you recommend, and what wiring/connections...
janardian
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7 Years Ago
Just look at any replacement fan and motor unit for any model oven and adapt it to fit your oven. The thing you need is a fan mounted on an extended shaft so that you can have the motor mounted...
Hanaldo
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7 Years Ago
I see, thanks!!
janardian
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7 Years Ago
Are you still thinking of building an autoclave? If so, I strongly suggest that you don't! For example, a 1m x 1m x 1m oven would experience, at only 1 atmosphere of pressure (around 14 .7psi and wha...
Steve Broad
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7 Years Ago
No just an oven! I messed up in some of the wording - and yeah I agree that would be very dangerous to DIY with no experience! We use vacuum bags and the oven for curing. Since we're a student club.....
janardian
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7 Years Ago
Phew! :-) You are using autoclave prepreg in an oven? What are the results like? Any photos? Where are you?
Steve Broad
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7 Years Ago
We're from UCLA and we're competing this year at the SAMPE student bridge contest! Although this is our third year participating, this is the first time we are trying to be fully self-sufficient! I.....
janardian
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7 Years Ago
OK, look forward to seeing them. With regard to cheap prepreg - I have just received 11m2 of 270gsm prepreg for the cost of shipping only! The company had some out of date material that they couldn'...
Steve Broad
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7 Years Ago
Hi I've just received my CN7800 pid controller and there is a small jumper in the box and download software ' how dose the pid controller receive data from the software and what is the jumper for as ...
Barnsley-Bill
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7 Years Ago
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