Twin Seq. Dry sumping for beginners :D

[Turbo-Brown]

Been at a wedding most of the weekend so not got as much done as I'd have liked, but the good news is that the first trial of resin infusion seeeeeeems to've worked

Started off by extending the infusion mesh to the edges of the flanges and putting the vacuum channel in place:




Then run bagging tape around the flange too:




Before starting to bag the assembly. The bagging film was about 50% larger than the mold and this extra needs to be taken up with the pleats you see along the sides, otherwise it won't make full contact with the mold under vacuum:




Having got that far, thoughts turned to the need for a vacuum tight catch-pot. Cobbled this together using a length of 3" alu tube, two discs of ali, a couple of hose joiners and some jubilee clips.




It needed some hose connections on top, and something to stop the resin from sticking inside so, poured some PVA release agent in and gave is a slosh around:




And got on with machining the hose tails:




And after all that, it's time to connect up all of the feed and vac hoses and check for the many leaks there'll be




After the leaks are all sorted, you can infuse the resin and, before the feed pot runs dry, clamp off the feed line:




The process of infusing this molding which is 3ply thick and roughly 0.7mx0.7m took literally 5 minutes. It then took a further 3 hours for the resin to gel so I'd recommend mixing a trial batch of resin to check for gel times if you're doing this yourself

The scary part comes tonight where I take the part from the mold and see how it turned out!

[m_jermyn]

Is it ready yet?

You are such a tease

[Turbo-Brown]

Probably, it needs leaving a good 24 hours before you can strip it from the mold though.

Can't wait to get home tonight and see what's what!

[Turbo-Brown]

Hmmmm, well! Some lessons learned!

First of all, you need to be absolutely sure the reinforcements have gone into all the corners or the unsupported gel will just break off.

Second, using wax and then a PVA release agent would've been a good idea as I had to wrestle this out of the mold and both the part and the mold sustained damage in the process

All the white areas are where the part has delaminated as a result of being levered at.




And the phone photo covers up some white areas on top where the reinforcement isn't in contact with the gel. It also disguises the cracks in the part:




However, chin up and all that! This was intended to be a cheap dry run and the part is still useful for checking fit under the bonnet.




A worthwhile experiment all told

[Turbo-Brown]

Thought I'd have another quick go at resin infusion last night, this time on something a bit smaller:




Curiosity got the better of me this morning and I unpacked the bag, but didn't have time to try getting it out of the mold before going to work:




Also had a trial fit of the dummy cooler

If you squint, you can kind of imagine how it's gonna look when it's all done:










Once the massaging of my ego was over and done with, it was onto the more serious task of fitting the throttles again:




Offering up the cooler:




And drilling some huuuge holes in it so I could measure for the trumpet lengths:










Away from tonight until Sunday unfortunately, but gonna have a good go at repairing the mold, giving it some more wax and also a coat of PVA and then trying again with the infusion

[march109]

Hmmm, PVA and release wax, what wax are you using?

Is it possible the mould would be better as a two piece?

[Turbo-Brown]

It's what the supplier I use recommends believe it or not. I've done it before actually, when I made that boot lid skin, works a treat!

The mold has baaaaaags of draft angle so don't think it's that causing problems, but there are a few areas where the mold has lost chunks of gel onto the part!

I use Meguiars Mirrorglaze No8

[e30_Turbo]

Nice Alex

Was wondering how long e30 shell mould might take

[march109]

Nice Alex

Was wondering how long e30 shell mould might take

Realistically its doable, but you'd have to SVA the car after using it.

And Aaaaaarrrrrghhhh I'm out of 120 grit paper. I'm out of 1 inch brushes, I'm even out of epoxy, bloody hell where does it all go?

[Coyote_ar]

dude, that is just plain sick. alex, you are the man!

[Turbo-Brown]

think a whole shell might take a while, and it'd be bendy as hell too


Have been having a back-to-basics play this week.

Made a very simple, 5 ply flat panel and was meticulous about sealing the pipes to the bag, the bag to the mold and so forth.

Not very wisely, I used surfboard resin instead of infusion resin. The surf resin juuuuust made it across the panel before gelling, but the end result is beautiful.




Also, started to repair the top part mold:



And have sealed the bottom half's molds together:




Had a measure of the finished flat panel to see how thick it is. Turns out that 200g carbon fibre compresses down quite a way, giving just 1.6mm thickness when finished. Think it's time to invest in some heavier weight cloth when the time comes to make the final parts.

[m_jermyn]

Looks good Alex, all the hard work will pay off in the end matey.

[march109]

Carbon Fibre is starting to do my nut in.

Been working on some skinned parts for a week or two now while trying to program a new online shop and leaving the lappy every 3 hours for my garden is seriously peeing me off.

Got some more consumables arriving today and some new cutting blades. Then its time to mould something and hit up the vacuum infusion.

[Turbo-Brown]

Can't be arsed skinning things in CF any more! Takes forever to do nicely and the money's crap.

I'd recommend doing lots of little trials with resin infusion. The importance of sealing the bag perfectly can't be overstated!

Here's that little test card I did the other day:



Thinking I might cut a strip out of it and compare it to a strip of ali the same thickness to see how they stand up to some simple bending tests.

Also made some progress (again) on the mold for the top. Should get that done and polished tonight ready for release treatment. Gonna be 3 coats of wax and two of PVA release.




Then, gonna put the clear-coat in, but this time with a peel ply backing.

The peel leaves a rough, textured surface which grips dry CF quite well so hopefully I'll be able to get the reinforcement to stick into the corners this time

[march109]

Got to say alex I'm a big fan of the surfboard resin, if you can get it to work the look is unbeatable and to top it off its usually UV resistant too, so will protect the CF when exposed to sunlight.

Skinning parts is doing my nut in, but equally the trouble I'm having isn't replicating the outside of an interior part but instead the inside fixing points, so when you want to do interior parts its frankly a massive pain in the ass either way, though I suppose at least if I made a decent mould I could knock out hundreds of them.

Problem is so far its all small volume type stuff. Got to email you this week too, the programming work I'm doing at the moment is a online shopppling cart system, once its done and handed over to the client I'll be changing it and looking for a way of making some money from it myself.

What vacuum pump are you using and where did you source yours too, as you know I got the kit one, which frankly wasn't actually a bad price, I'm wondering if I need to get a larger capacity one for large parts too.

Would love a workshop to build an autoclave in though!

[Turbo-Brown]

I like the stuff too, but it's definitely too thick to infuse anything but small components with

Know what you mean about the internal fixing tabs and the like, think molding the outer skin and then bonding on the inner tabs is the only realistic way to do it isn't it?

Pretty sure we've both got the exact same pump, mine came from eastcoast fibreglass (as always! ) It took literally no time at all for it to infuse my 0.7m x 0.7m cooler, so I reckon it'll handle a bonnet easily enough


Have polished the mold!.....again!








Tonight, it's waxing and PVAing time!

[goosiegander]

Excellent work!

Definatly interested in the direct replacement sunroof!

btw this thread is epic

[Turbo-Brown]

Cheers dude, gonna take a little while until they're ready unfortunately though


Hooray! Actually managed to make something useful this weekend!

Had a think about where I went wrong with the last cooler casing and why the reinforcements hadn't pulled into the corners. To cut a long story short, if you have too complex a shape, you need to make it up of little bits rather than one big piece of cloth.....with one exception!

First off, stick down the outer skin. This can be in one piece as it's being held firmly in place on some cured but still slightly tacky resin (this is 200g / m^2)




Next, start filling the mold with smaller bits of cloth which need only go maybe 10-20mm around corners (this is 650g / m^2):






T'other thing I'd noticed was lots of air bubbles getting into the system, so came up with this method of sealing the bag to the connectors:



More tape is put on top of the bag and to seal the hose in place too.


And here's the result:



Very pleased with it indeed, especially the PVA release agent which meant the bare minimum of persuasion was needed to get the part to spring out of the mold

[baptie0]

Well done, that looks great

[m_jermyn]

Well its about time isnt it?

[Turbo-Brown]

After a couple of false starts on the bottom half of the cooler, finally managed to get things rolling last night

Not sure I can be bothered to resin infuse this one, but might have a change of heart if I can find a little more time.

Last nights efforts were just to put a coat of heat resistant resin in the PVAd mold and then start putting the first layer of CF in:








Luckily, it's mostly hidden so the scrunched up bit of weave over the back there shouldn't be too noticable

[MarkT]

Really enjoying this thread

What's next on the agenda?

[Turbo-Brown]

Toot-diddle-oooot!

TRUMPETS!

[march109]

Are you using heat resistant resin for the whole cooler? What sort of clarity does it give for use on 'show' parts?

[Turbo-Brown]

I've used a heat resistant outer clear coat, which is actually pretty darned clear as long as it's not too thick. Not as clear as surf board resin, but not as agressive or gloopy either.

The infusion resin is reasonably heat resistant anyway, and will give key areas an internal fire retardant coat too, i.e. where the cooler is fairly close to the big turbo and where it's in line to get some spitbacks from the throttles.

[Turbo-Brown]

Some more lessons learned these last couple of weeks.

1) Resin infusion and multi-part molds need careful planning. You have to be veeeeery careful to get the mold parts to seal together reliably.
2) If a vac bag bridges too badly, it'll go off pop!

On the 3rd attempt to seal the back of the mold at the moment, which involved bagging up as normal, realising it didn't seal, then bagging up the whoooooole thing. Seems to be working this time

In other news: To prevent myself getting bored with all the CF stuff, I measured up the sump and have ordered two flanges in steel.

I was gonna use the ali original sump, but it's gonna be a pain to weld and keep flat and so forth.

Also, it occured to me that I need a rigid method of mounting a windage tray, the pump itself, the pickups, inlets and outlets and all that kind of thing so one of the flanges will have all this gubbins welded on, and the outer one will carry the sump pan itself

[m_jermyn]

Alex,

It just accured to me that you have been doing this since 2007...

Hurry up all ready

Mike

[Turbo-Brown]

Yeah I know, but there have been prolonged periods where I've not touched it at all. Another one of which is around the corner as I'm about to become a homo-ner......probably.


Anyway, before getting a house and becoming all domesticated, infused the bottom half of the cooler casing last night.

Not especially confident as there were loooots of little bubbles being pulled through the mold, despite the two bags and sealed seams!

Next lesson is that multi part molds need to go in one big bag I think.

Here's all the stuff being loaded into the mold:










And it's all spending the day in my new, very high-tech curing oven today:



Otherwise known as the back seat of the car on a sunny day If it'll kill a dog, it'll cure a composite

[Speedtouch]

That middle shot looks like a druggies' paraphanalia

[Turbo-Brown]

Can see the Daily Mail headlines now: "Drug dealers read the Express! We ask; should it be banned?"


It's come out alright!

Was a bit nervous that being quite rigid, the part might not release from the mold, but it was a fairly painless process!

More lessons learned from these resin infusions:
1-Wear riggers gloves when releasing components as the shards of resin will tear your hands to ribbons.
2-DEFINITELY wear goggles when working on releasing a component from the mold! Things like the infusion mesh require a lot of force to remove them from the laminate in some instances with the consequence that when they do let go, they throw razor sharp scales of resin into the air. Was very glad of my goggles yesterday!

Anyway, without further ado here's the underside! The big patches are the PVA release agent and will peel / wash straight off:




And the inside. White strakes are peel-ply

[m_jermyn]

So whats next from here?

[Turbo-Brown]

Ooh, had a delivery yesterday!

Was surprised by how quickly these were made, and how reasonably priced they were too, considering some of the quotes I had!



So the next few of things to be working on are making my new flat habitable (it's a bit skanky at the moment) the sump, and also making up the internal structure for the charge cooler

[gareth]

ooh, nice profiles!
who did them? Water jet cut?

[Speedtouch]

Congratulations on the flat purchase! I did that 10 years ago, and it's still an ongoing project

[Turbo-Brown]

The profiles were courtesy of Laser Profiles in Poole

They're just laser cut from 6mm steel plate.

Don't think my flat's big enough to take 10 years to do up. Did manage to blast through a couple of walls, take out the old microbore central heating.....and our lass found this behind the wall paper in the spare room: