if i remember correctly these decks are made in a heated press. he showed his setup in one of his live streams recently.
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I really need to get an insta account, I’m missing out on everything!
I’m gonna have to start looking into those videos!
happy to help with generating the gcode for the cutting operations.
this is the trickiest part of cnc operation as you need to balance several things based on material properties. But as I mentioned above to @Tamatoa once you understand the basic principles and the gottchas you can get creative and expand you quiver of approaches.
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Do you recall the material used in the press? or any other details about the setup?
ideally if I could make the negative and positive out of something that would conduct heat metal ceramic that would be ideal, not sure about how doable it would be with the tools at my disposal.
I was thinking last night I could make the two sides of the press out of wood, clamp, and bake, but now I’m thinking the wood would insulate the prepreg and possibly mess up the cure.
so possibly the solution would be to have a heating element embedded in the press to add low level localized heat in addition to having the press inside of the autoclave.
possibly only localized heat? I mean if it was exposed evenly throughout the press it seems it would be even more effective than autoclave ambient heat…
have to think it through a bit…
I don’t think conducting heat would work. It has to be actively generated. I am guessing heating element lining the wall of the mould. Maybe something like this?
yeah, good stuff, so what do you think about ambient heat in addition? seems like it would be wasted and not actually effect the mats at all.
embedded heating elements inside the press seems like the winner for sure…
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I’m gonna add all this autoclave and heated press prepreg stuff to the wiki up top as well.
pretty sure this will be the method I will use moving forward.
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So I think the kaly setup had a mould made from stacked ply wood, then some sort of heat mat inside the mould, then the prepreg then the other half of the mould. All this was when inside a huge press. For sure not inside an oven or autoclave.
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ok so direct heat inside press and ambient heat from autoclave.
Thank you for the info!
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Sorry, typo. No oven or autoclave
A welcome typo, less complex, less money XD Thx for clarifying.
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Following, sounds super cool!
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I am on to something… look at the prices on these.
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Does the vacuum pump you listed hold a pressure and turn on/off on it’s own?
Would this setup also work for me enclosures
Been meaning to get into making decks and enclosures for my builds
in tutorial video I linked in the wiki, they keep the pump running only for a portion of the curing time. but they left it running for hrs. checked for leaks, then at some point in the cure they clamped off the tubes. I think, verify from that video to be sure.
vacuum infusion method would be perfect for enclosures. you will be able to make them much thinner and stronger that a hand layup.
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so cute!
Sweet. I was thinking of a hand layup and then vacuum bagging it. Want to pick up some veneers as well to make a deck…
Would the bagging material used for deck and enclosures be the same thickness or do you want thinner vacuum film for segmented enclosures?
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Thickness of the vacuum bagging doesn’t matter at all. Even people who put the vacuum bagged parts in pressure chamber also use the same standard thickness.
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anymore details on the bag you mentioned?
@nervkil do you plan to do the layup in a certain way to minimize torsional twisting? Maybe some unidirectional carbon fiber would work
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