Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Instrument Side Panels - vacuum bagging

Finish sanded layer of SuperFill that was applied to panel mold.  Waxed mold and misted a few coats of mold release.  

Our goal is to surface match the side panels to the center panel.  This requires a material buildup to equal the thickness of the center aluminum piece plus the carbon fiber overlay.  A quick calculation determined that we would need six layers of fiberglass plus two layers of carbon fiber.  A 50:50 resin to fabric ratio requires 128g of resin.  That's a lot!


Eight hours later...  Removing the bagging material and bleeder-breather layers revealed a very tacky part that had clearly not yet finished curing under room temperature and good vacuum. 


We'll leave the part exposed to a strong morning sun for a few hours to finish the cure process.  


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