Tag Archives: epoxy resin

3D Printing and Composites

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Building the surfboard got me interested in using composites. I’ve done a bit of experimentation with 3D printing and composites before and I wanted to see how far I could push the limits of this technology available to me.

I Brainstormed some areas that I wanted to try and improve my capabilities in. From these areas, I decided on 3 ways in which I wanted to test the technology: 1. For detail (with the teeth moulds), 2. For different methods of layup (with the cube moulds) and 3. for different ways of applying the epoxy resin (With the hemi-sphere ones).

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Results

  1. Detail

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With these tests, I found that the moulds 1-3 produced very little deformation in the end product. I think this may have been partly due to the fact that there wasn’t that much clamping force applied. I would like to expand on this test by testing different amounts of clamping pressure and see how that changes the amount of detail I can get.

Model 4 did produce good deformation but the detail was lost on the ends of the points. This was partly due to the printer failing midway through the mould making meaning that the tips of mould 4 are cut off a little. This leads me to experiment with the printer to get better quality prints later on.

2. Methods of Layup

layup methods

Left to right these models are:

90 degree laid fibres stuffed in,

cube1

90 degrees laid fibres trimmed to strips and then inserted,

cube2

45-degree fibres stuffed in,

cube3

45-degree fibres trimmed to strips,

cube4

90 degrees fibreglass trimmed to strips,

cube 5

90-degree fibreglass stuffed in.

cube 6

Conclusions: The Ones with the trimmed fabric generally produced a nicer finish on the cube, they were also easier to insert and needed less trimming. The fibreglass cubes ended up with a really nice finish and the 45 degree carbon fibre worked much better than the 90 degree carbon fibre.

3. Epoxy application

Improving my printer.

After the failed 3D prints, I decided to take some time to try and dial in the settings on my machine to get better quality. I used the standard model in the 3D printing community to test my print settings: “a  benchy”

Surfboard Fibreglassing

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Once I had a finished foam core ready, it was onto the fiberglassing. There were some dents and marks in the foam from knocks during the making process but I decided to go ahead and fibreglass the board anyway and fix these later because I didn’t have any expanding foam.how to cut lap | Composite Cornerhttps://compositecorner.wordpress.com/tag/how-to-cut-lap/

I will be using the cut lap method for the rails of my board. This is where you use tape to mask off the underside of the board and then trim the fibreglass along this line. Masking the blankHere I am masking off the top deck of the board except for a roughly 10 cm area all around the rails so that I can have an overlap between the top and bottom layers of fibreglass. cutting the fibreglassI also had to make small incisions every so often so that the cloth would wrap around nicely. They had to be closer together and more frequent on the areas of the board with tighter curves like the nose and tail. unglassed boardNext, I laid the cloth out, Mixed up my two-part epoxy resin and poured it on the board. I found it was useful to have a ‘squeegee like’  tool to direct the resin (I used a bit of plastic sheet) and to pour the resin in sections to ensure I didn’t run out. glassed boardI found it was important to make sure the overhangs were fully saturated with resin before trying to stick them round, otherwise they didn’t stick nicely.