UNITEC CAT Course 2011: Week 20 - Completed the inside laminate and vacuum packing the core foam.

This week was busier than any previous weeks. During this week it seems that all of us (those present) were hand on to work on the laminating the inside layers of Boat Cloth and Double Bias as well as gluing on the core foam for the top part of the deck. It was a great team work environment with all those present.

Some technical details on the materials used:

Tools:
1) Squeezies
2) Gloves - plenty of them used by myself and Hoff when we need to lay the boat cloth and the double bias and help out with the resin application.
3) Mask - breathing apparatus
4) Overall
5) Roller
6) Vacuum Bag
7) Proferated plastic
8) Weed mat

Consumables:
1) Wax and PVA lotion (Film)
2) Acetone for cleaning the squeezies
3) Ice cream container
4) Masking tapes
5) Packing tapes
6) Cheese cloth (for waxing the mould)
7) Resin ADR246 and Hardener ADH 28. - we did 9 mixes of 6 (500 gm X 125 gm ) and 3 (300 gm X 75 gm) of resins and hardener respectively for the inside laminates. Ratio of 4:1.
8) Microfibre 403 (I do not know how many mixes of the microfibre was used ( I was not doing the recordings).

Materials for Inside Laminates
Boat cloth - 3 pieces of 1000mm by 3000mm
EDB - double bias glass cloth - 1 piece of 1300mm by 3000mm, 1 piece of 800mm by 3000mm and 1 piece of 1300mm by 2800mm.

Material Data
1)Weight of the boat cloth is 200 gm per square metre
2) Weight of the EDB is 430 per square metre.
3) Estimated weight of the boat cloth and the EDB was 4.3 pg and 20 kg based on the estimated 10 metre square needed for the task.
4) Ration of resin to glass cloth is 1.2 to 1. Therefore amount of resin needed is 7.5 to 6.3 kg.
5) Stock of resin available DR 246 is 13.5 kg and ADH 28 is 2.8 kg.
6) Microfibre 403 available 1.664 kg.

Though we were assigned specified roles and task for this laminating job, in the end everyone helps out as and when needed to complete the tasks on hand without having to be told to do so. Only Hoff and I were handling the glass cloth materials before they were laid.

The boat cloth were laid without any overlap as there was no need for them to overlap. For the EDB however the overlap is supposedly to be 30 mm. In the end, the overlap between the first 1300 x 3000 piece and the 800 x 3000 pieces were at least 80 mm. At one stage, there was confusion over the final 1300 x 2800 piece and the 800 x 3000 piece. Eventually we managed to work these out nicely (though as as desired) for the inside laminate.

The vacuuming aspect was rather challenging once the vacuum pump was activated. Some foams were not in place and there were leaks at a couple of points where the plastic vacuum bag were jointed with vacuum tapes. The vacuum pump was switch off and on a number of time. It was a race against time.

(Will upload some photos of the process later as I do not have them on the desktop here. The photos are in my laptop.)

This is the first time I worked with big laminating task and use of time and sequencing appear to be critical parts. Correct sequencing come from planning on how to lay the glass clothes as well as knowing our individual roles.Team work with specified roles and tasks assigned are essential element of making laminates so as not to cause confusion. In the final moment, everyone present put in whatever efforts and do whatever tasks are needed. For me, it is great to see everyone putting in their energy into this after so many weeks of independent working on our own with no group accountability. This seems to me this is the only task so far where everyone in the class learns at the same pace and same "page". My other conclusion is that many hands are needed for such a task especially for first timers like most if not all of us.

Here are the photos (these photos do not show the process of the laminating of the inside layer) of the laminating process:of the foam core and the vacuuming process-