_styroFOAM MOLD
This week's assignament: design and make a 3D mold (~ft2), and produce a fiber composite part in it. I made a canvas out a painting, which I thought was a good idea as its light and strong for easy transportation.
The mold was done out of styrofoam. To mill the piece I used the Precix 11100 series machine. The cutting was done first through a Horizontal Roughing with a 12mm round millbit, and then a Spiral Finishing with a 6mm square millbit in RhinoCam.
_Burlap Composite
For the composite I used only two layers of Burlap fiber in crossed directions, because I wanted the composite to be as light as possible.
I used 600grs of epoxy resin in a ratio 1:2 of epoxy and hardener respectively and spread it through the Burlap.
Be sure to have the safety and releasing films on top of the mold before laying the soaked burlap fiber on.
_Vacuum Bagging
This is the right order in which the safety and release films go in order to take it to the vaccum machine.
The vaccuming takes aproximately 6hrs, but the first 3hs are the most importante, so try no to open the machine during the first hours.
This is the final result. Maybe I should have done a styrofoam with higher extrusions for the canvas to look more detailed. What is more, the Spiral Finishing cant be seen, the styrofoam texture was stronger. High density foam would have worked better.
