Composites
For me one of the funniest and cool exercises, make your oun skate board. The aim of the Fab Skate project is to develop a system that will allow us to deliver fully customized, high quality skateboards and longboards for the price of an off-the-shelf model. Skateboarding is as much about self expression as it is about technical skills or performance equipment, our goal is to provide all of the above through the development of a fully digital process. We rely heavily on digital fabrication techniques, from large format laser cutters to CNC mills.
Fab Academy Barcelona Class No.8
Assignament: Composites
By Robert Garita
Machines:
-Legend 36EXT Epilog Laser Cut
-Vacuum bag
Softwares:
-Rhino 5
-Grasshopper
Material:
High Density Foam,
Bamboo Wood,
Peel Ply textile,
Breather textile and
Epoxic Resin.
Process for the production of the skate board.
This composite object is tge result of a personal research of our tutor Luciano Betoldi. Consist in a skate made of 2 layers of bamboo, 1 layer of textile and 1 layer of resin in the middle.
The first thing to do is to understand how much material we have for the mold that we will need to use for the vacuum process. The Bounding Box (click to download the file) of High Density Foam for each mold is 800x300x70 mm, so with those dimensions I started designing the shape of my Skateboard in Rhino (click to download the file) all the things that I want to add it (draws and stickers).
With the design of my skateboard the next step is to cut the bamboo sheet, I cut just two sheets but and the end of the process I realized that if I want an stronger skateboard is better to use more than 2.
Now is time to engrave my work, on the front part of my boars I have a very popular costa rican expression “para Vida” that means full of life and in the back I introduce a cartoon from a Costa Rica artist “Munguía”. For the last one I used a Grasshopper Definition (click to download the file) that creates a pattern with shape (for my design I choose the circle one).
Once I cut and engrave eveything is time to prepare all the layers for the vacuum process (vacuum bag technique). We used this composite manufacturing technique in which vacuum pressure is used during the resin cure cycle and with that u can get the final shape of your board.
First thing to do put all the layers: High Density Foam, Wood, Peel Ply, Breather and the Epoxic Resin, check the right order on the diagram above. For the epoxic resin you hace to be sure to make the right mix. The proportion is 2:1 that in our case corresponds to 100 ml Part A and 50ml Part B. You mix it for 3 minutes and spread it on the textile making sure it covers the entire surface.
When you are finished with this process is time to put everything into the vacuum bag and wait for 6 hours to get the properly bend of the wood.
Now we can see the amazing result of the process, my own Fab Skate
