Composites
This week's assignment is to design a 3D mold and produce a fibre composite in it.
I want to design a lamp shade for the fluorescent light in my office.
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My first step was sculpting the surface in Blender.
Then the exported .stl file from Blender was imported into PartWorks 3D.
The original dimension of the lamp shade is 3.95' X 1.95'. Since the estimate time just for the rought cut would be more than 2 hours and the ShopBot was quite busy during that day. I decided to make a mini version first.
Milling
I then cut out the piece from the board and used a heat gun to seal the pores on the surface.
The foam piece was first wrapped by plastic film, and then 2 layers of burlap, 1 layer of perforated pink film, and 2 layers of Bleeder. They were then put into a vacuum bag.
Final Composite. Overall it looks OK, but there are "Wrinkles" on one surface produced by the vacuum bag. It would probably be better to use a 2-Part Mold for such surface.
One day after I made another one with the original size (3.95' X 1.95').
And then install that in my office!
The result is not very bad. Next time I will design better shape and also get rid of the dark area in the middle caused by the overlapping of the burlap.