With everything cleaned up around here and some holiday things taken care of I was able to get over to that second float half and get the infusion started.
Overall, everything went much better than the first half.
I was able to pull a good vacuum despite a leak I couldn't locate.
The infusion strategy worked better than last time as well and was much easier to manage.
The only real problem I had was a stupid decision to use 1/8" (3.175mm) resin lines.
I wanted to ensure the flow was slow enough to do a good job, but this was way too small and choked the flow.
The solution was to replace intake lines in the middle of the infusion to get things moving along. That worked OK except the last intake line got plugged up somehow forcing me to stab an additional connection directly into the bag as a last ditch effort. That kinda messed things up for me and caused some tense moments of panic.
In the end, it looks OK.
I will be contacting the vendor about the seemingly dry areas. I have a feeling my perforated film is not allowing enough resin to pass through quickly enough. I plan to test that theory by doing my next sheet infusion without that film to see what happens.
At the moment, I've got the shop heated up to 74F (24C) for 24 hours to complete the initial cure before applying heat.
I will be prepping for bulkhead creation here soon.
All bulkheads will be made with Carbon skins to save a little weight throughout and help to offset a little bit of my heavy handed parts in other places.
 |
| Left over waste resin. Not bad! |
 |
| Peel-Ply is still in place and these glossy areas will turn to a matte finish after the heat is applied. I think what happens is some of the excess resin "melts" into the fabric (?) |
No comments:
Post a Comment