Hi everyone!
Amidst all of the covid shenanigans, I have been de facto evicted from my previous residence. The good news is that now that I’m back home for the summer early, so I have access to workshop space and can start work on weird and wonderful fuckery projects.
What I currently have in the works is an exciting project based around me buying too much supplies for a fiberglass enclosure. I’m planning on building a custom composite deck with an integrated enclosure, embedded motor wires, and any other bells n’ whistles me and the other fuckwits cherished friends can whip up.
The current plan is to use a polystyrene foam core with several laminations of 250gsm fiberglass, bulking up the thicker areas with some strand mat. I’ve also been thinking about reinforcing the composite with other materials like chicken wire or something but that’s probably just overkill.
Since I had an incident involving water ingress with my current build, I will be moving everything that’s still alive from that board over to this one which will hopefully be much more water resistant (leaving enough room for some neoboxes in case my unity can’t be revived though )…
Anyway, that’s enough of me gabbing - what I’m gettin’ at is that I want to open up a discussion on fiberglass and other composites, to hopefully push this project to be somethin’ real neato.
EDITS:
folks have suggested vacuum bagging is a good idea so I will be acquiring a bag to hook up to my shopvac to do that
As a compromise for Mr. Dirt Surfer, I’m working on an idea for the lid which will satisfy both the water ingress and look and feel concerns - updates to come.
Forget chikken wire… For a foam core construction look to surf board constuction or even aircraft construction where they often use hexcore (think aircraft quality cardboard construction) but with aluminum… Have fun… Seems like a fun project…
I’ve heard that all you really need for vac bagging is one of those vacuum packing bags for clothes and a shopvac… Would that be functional or is a proper setup necessary?
I used a pump and control valve which turn it on and off, on which you can also adjust the pressure. It can hold plenty of vacuum for as long as needed to cure.
if you’re serious about doing it I’d say yes… the propensity of weight of a composite deck is the resin, and vac. bagging the board will allow you to use less resin, and make a stronger lighter safer better laminated board…
if you’re just doing it to do something… just do it…
Good reads…
Looking like vacuum bagging is the way to go atm.
Fortunately, a fuckwit friend has experience with vac bagging carbon fiber laminates for auto parts, so that will be helpful.
I’m not too worried about surface finish because I’ll be sanding everything anyway to prep for coatings (ruggedized rubber roadside and maybe glass frit topside?)
Also, here’s some very crude cad of how I’m thinking it’ll look…
Why go with the lid on top? I don’t understand why so many integrated decks have the lid on top. To me it makes much more sense to have the lid on the bottom.
)…
