Week 8 - Composites

This week was all about combining two materials (e.g., soft fabric and resin) and creating something strong and potentially with elasticity.

I decided to create a small model of the frame of my final project, to see if using composites to make something strong and light is something I'd like to eventually use.

I milled a simple wheel model I made in SolidWorks:

The outcome was decent enough, but not smooth:

I therefore went ahead and carefully sanded the piece, followed by using John's awesome advice of using a heat gun. The end result was much better!

It took me several attempts of manually cutting the fabric to realize that I'd better automate the process. I cut simple rectangular pieces using the laser cutter.

Now it was time to do the composite! I tried to hold my piece together vertically, which was a poor choice. This picture shows how not to do it --

I then simply positioned the piece horizontally, and covered it slowly with the fabric and epoxy + hardener.

Covering in nylon and foam:

Bagging and vacuuming:

And finally -