Andrew Manto

howtomakealmostanything


Home Week 01 Final Project Proposal Week 02 Laser Cutting Press Fit Week 03 Integrated Circuit Programming Week 04 3d Printing and Scanning Week 05 Circuit Board Design Week 06 Molding and Casting Week 07 Programming Week 08 Make Something Nice Week 09 Input Devices Week 10 Composites Week 11 Output Devices Week 12 Interface and Application Programming Week 13 Networking

Week 14 Final Project

WEEK 10 // Composites


The goal of this project was to construct a 'holder' for the bottle opener that I made in week 8. The holder would elevator the opener off the table and could potentially be mounted on a vertical surface. I'd designed the file in Rhino and exported to Mastercam.



I did all of the toolpathing in Mastercam.




Here is an image of the final mold. The quality was pretty nice. No nicks or gauges anywhere. I covered the whole thing in a coating of vasaline and went through the set-up process.



I cut up the linen that was in the fablab into thin strips, about 2 inches wide. I laid them up over the mold in alternating orthoganal orientations [one row along the x axis and the next along the y axis] 4 layers thick.



Here is an image of the bag with the vacuum applied. It held the vacuum really well. I kneeded the composite layers down with my hands while they were in the bag to ensure that the draft angles would come out correctly.



I broke the whole setup out of the bag and then trimed the edges with a band saw while the composite was still adhered to the wood block. This made it really stable and easy to work with.



Back side of the composite layup.





Here are some images of the final thing. The composite popped off the mold with a putty knife and holds the opener really nice and snug! There are some spots where the epoxy pooled a bit, and the overall shape isn't as stiff as I thought it would be. I am also pretty happy with how the linen resolved the steep draft angles around the opener edge and feet.