Pre Preg Oven

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Pre Preg Oven

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Castle Works Motorsports	C Castle Works Motorsports posted 5 Years Ago HOT Topic Details
C Group: Forum Members Posts: 4, Visits: 11	Hi, I am new to carbon fiber parts, but want to give it a try and start with some small parts. I am comfortable creating 3D parts in CAD, I have CNC mills and able to create molds. I would like to try some prepreg parts but unsure about what to use when it comes to an oven. Can you simple use a conventional kitchen oven (assuming vacuum could be plumbed into it). What problems would I encounter? If a conventional oven cannot be used, what do most use starting out? I would prefer not to invest in the cost of an oven specifically designed for curing CF parts until I know this is sometime I would like to do more of. Thanks, Kevin
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Steve Broad	Steve Broad posted 5 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 408, Visits: 4.1K	+x Castle Works Motorsports - 5/27/2020 1:41:33 PM Hi, I am new to carbon fiber parts, but want to give it a try and start with some small parts. I am comfortable creating 3D parts in CAD, I have CNC mills and able to create molds. I would like to try some prepreg parts but unsure about what to use when it comes to an oven. Can you simple use a conventional kitchen oven (assuming vacuum could be plumbed into it). What problems would I encounter? If a conventional oven cannot be used, what do most use starting out? I would prefer not to invest in the cost of an oven specifically designed for curing CF parts until I know this is sometime I would like to do more of. Thanks, Kevin I bought a conventional electric oven from ebay and have used it for many years for small parts. Plumbing in the vacuum is simply a matter of drilling a hole in the side :-) The main disadvantage of a domestic oven is the rather course temperature control compared to a PID controller. However I have had great results by raising the temperature manually approx 3 degrees C a minute using a hand held temp gauge. In fact, for simple things like brackets I simply turn the temp up until the orange light, the one that tells me the oven is below the set temp, comes on, wait until it goes out and repeat until the oven reaches the required temperature. You can make quite big things in a basic oven.
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Castle Works Motorsports	C Castle Works Motorsports posted 5 Years Ago HOT Post Details
C Group: Forum Members Posts: 4, Visits: 11	+x Steve Broad - 5/27/2020 6:41:40 PM +x Castle Works Motorsports - 5/27/2020 1:41:33 PM Hi, I am new to carbon fiber parts, but want to give it a try and start with some small parts. I am comfortable creating 3D parts in CAD, I have CNC mills and able to create molds. I would like to try some prepreg parts but unsure about what to use when it comes to an oven. Can you simple use a conventional kitchen oven (assuming vacuum could be plumbed into it). What problems would I encounter? If a conventional oven cannot be used, what do most use starting out? I would prefer not to invest in the cost of an oven specifically designed for curing CF parts until I know this is sometime I would like to do more of. Thanks, Kevin I bought a conventional electric oven from ebay and have used it for many years for small parts. Plumbing in the vacuum is simply a matter of drilling a hole in the side :-) The main disadvantage of a domestic oven is the rather course temperature control compared to a PID controller. However I have had great results by raising the temperature manually approx 3 degrees C a minute using a hand held temp gauge. In fact, for simple things like brackets I simply turn the temp up until the orange light, the one that tells me the oven is below the set temp, comes on, wait until it goes out and repeat until the oven reaches the required temperature. You can make quite big things in a basic oven. Steve, Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it. I will defintely give it a shot.
	Reply Like 4