justice_purdue
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- Sep 24, 2012
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Hello everyone! I've been lurking around the forum for awhile, but I've never posted a build thread before - I thought I'd try it out and see what you guys think. I built a Wildman Blackhawk 54mm rocket and managed to squeeze in a Loki L1400. I'll just spam a bunch of pictures below and kind of describe things. I'm still pretty new to the hobby and I had alot of help/ learned alot during this process.
One of my goals for the project was to learn how to do a carbon fiber overwrap on the fins. David Kittell was my mentor here. He taught me the process and allowed me to use the materials/tools in his inventory. The image below describes the layering process we used:
Having never done this before, I decided to first do a carbon fiber overwrap on my wildman junior, which I had launched many times before. The idea here was to allow me to learn the process and to be able to do a better job for round 2 on the Blackhawk 54. Below, you can see that we made a fin template and cut out all the necessary layers of material. This pink layer is the bleeder layer.
Here, you see the "diaper" layer already cut out. This is a cotton layer that absorbs all of the excess epoxy as it is pulled out of the carbon fiber. The green plastic on the floor is the vacuum bag material about to be traced and cut out.
Gus cuts out the carbon fiber layer. It's important to use a pizza cutter here, not scissors. The carbon fiber frays very easily.
Gus applies the first layer of carbon fiber and liberally applies West Systems epoxy. It's important to saturate and work as much epoxy as possible into the fibers. The vacuum will pull out any excess epoxy. We used 2 layers of carbon fiber for the wildman junior.
After the carbon fiber, we place the bleeder layers. These layers don't stick to the epoxy, yet have holes to allow excess epoxy to be pulled through into the diaper layer.
We tape on the diaper layer and then tape up the vacuum bag. We use very nice sealing tape to seal the edges of the vacuum bag. We pulled vacuum for 48 hours.
You can see how the excess expoy is being pulled through the bleeder layers holes and is being absorbed by the cotton diaper layer.
One of my goals for the project was to learn how to do a carbon fiber overwrap on the fins. David Kittell was my mentor here. He taught me the process and allowed me to use the materials/tools in his inventory. The image below describes the layering process we used:
Having never done this before, I decided to first do a carbon fiber overwrap on my wildman junior, which I had launched many times before. The idea here was to allow me to learn the process and to be able to do a better job for round 2 on the Blackhawk 54. Below, you can see that we made a fin template and cut out all the necessary layers of material. This pink layer is the bleeder layer.
Here, you see the "diaper" layer already cut out. This is a cotton layer that absorbs all of the excess epoxy as it is pulled out of the carbon fiber. The green plastic on the floor is the vacuum bag material about to be traced and cut out.
Gus cuts out the carbon fiber layer. It's important to use a pizza cutter here, not scissors. The carbon fiber frays very easily.
Gus applies the first layer of carbon fiber and liberally applies West Systems epoxy. It's important to saturate and work as much epoxy as possible into the fibers. The vacuum will pull out any excess epoxy. We used 2 layers of carbon fiber for the wildman junior.
After the carbon fiber, we place the bleeder layers. These layers don't stick to the epoxy, yet have holes to allow excess epoxy to be pulled through into the diaper layer.
We tape on the diaper layer and then tape up the vacuum bag. We use very nice sealing tape to seal the edges of the vacuum bag. We pulled vacuum for 48 hours.
You can see how the excess expoy is being pulled through the bleeder layers holes and is being absorbed by the cotton diaper layer.