Final Project: A Cat Friendly Bench.
All documentation related to the final project is distributed among these htlml pages:- A short presentation of my final project (Click here)
- All documentation of the final project production:
- Final project CNC Machining (Click here):
- Final project electronics design and production: Fabduino + Handmade Led Stripe (Click here)
- Final project composite: A half of an X tube (We are here)
** CNC Machining (I) DM: A cat friendly bench (Click here)
**CNC Machining (II) FOAM: An X tube mold (Click here)
Final Project: A Cat Friendly Bench. Composite.
1. Making a 120 cm x 60 cm composite: Trying to build a super half of a X tube
1.1. The mold.
The documentation of how is the mold been done can be found at this link:
* CNC Machining (II) FOAM: An X tube mold (Click here)
1.2. Components of the composite: fiber and matrix
*Fiber: thin white cloth. I wanted to try some material that could allow light lighting inside to be seen from outside.
*Matrix: RESOLTECH 1040T + 1045N (from a spanish vendor) , a high temperature epoxy. To make a matrix from these products it is required to mix the two products in this proportion:
** 100 g of RESOLTECH 1040T
**30 g of RESOLTECH 1045N
Once the mix is done, there are 3 hours working time left(tiempo de gel) until the product get to his higher temperature (more than 90º).
1.3. Process
The process is the same we followed on the composite week assigment that it is explained here. This time we have to do the process twice to make the composite more strong by putting twice of cloth and twice of epoxy. The matrix took 24 hours to get cured everytime.
2. Things I have learnt
* When you work with a very big piece, with a very big mold, it is very important to try to avoid cloth folding on the process of placing the cloth and putting the matrix on.
* The place where folds of cloth, or folds of all a mix of plastic + woolly fiber+cloth, will give us lots of problems afterwards. These folds will problably became fractures of the piece. After putting the piece out of the vacuum bag, we start taking off all plastic and rest of protective layers that are covering the piece. It is at this moment when one start pulling the layers off that it is very easy to break your piece.
