July 18
Perimeter laminations
Ben came over yesterday and we added carbon laminations to the perimeter of the seat cut-out.
Details:
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1. I use my router and rounded a 1/4" radius around all of the edges. Not the outside edge - I'm still waiting for the fairing mold because I trace the fairing shape onto the carbon board. |
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2. Rounding the edges included the holes for the bottom brackets and headtubes. |
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3. This shows how the steering headtube bracket fits into the carbon frame. The aluminum triangular part is the steering arm for remote steering linkage. |
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4. We added 3 layers of 6.7 oz unidirectional carbon tape cut to about 1.5" wide. This tape will not curve around the edge radius. |
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5. Ben wetting out the uni tape.
We also added 1 layer of 11.1 oz weave cut at 45 degrees to the direction of the weave and wrapped it right around the edges. I was going to add 2 layers of 5 oz, but I found that the 11 oz curved around the corners just fine. I guess we were elbow deep in epoxy by that point which is probably why there is no photo of the weave. |
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6. Strips of peel ply was taped to hold it all together, then we wrapped cellophane around all of the bends to keep it all nice and tight while it cured. |
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7. The plywood lid went back on top with weights to hold it flat. One of the benefits of making a carbon frame this way, is you can ensure that your geometry stays level, flat and true every step of the way by simply making sure it stays flat when curing. |
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8. The next day I peeled off the peel ply and plastic - it worked out very nice. Needs a bit of clean-up, but generally it's pretty good. |
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9. The next step is to repeat exactly what we did for the seat cut-out with the wheel wells, and head tube holes.
Then I need to reinforce the heck out of the two very thin areas behind the front tire, and in front of the rear tire. Then I add some 11 oz cloth to the areas that require reinforcement - like around the headtubes, BB fork, etc. |
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