Today was an extremely productive day. The engine is now in, electric panels are mostly done, and stuff is getting mounted to the car. We did a lot of work with carbon fiber today - we did the initial layup on the five wing sections and did the first part of a new seat.
We got our wings from Bob at
Flying Foam. He did our test wings last year too, and the quality was top notch once again.
Lots more pictures of carbon fiber after the jump.
The first step is to lay down layers of carbon fiber on the foam. Word of warning: Do NOT spray the spray adhesive directly on the foam! I'm glad Danny found this out before we actually started laying down the fabric.
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| What happens when you spray spray adhesive on EPS... |
Spray the adhesive on the fabric, and lay the mold down on the fabric. Slowly and carefully smooth the fabric over the mold, and wrap around, taking extra care around the leading edge.
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| Cutting carbon fiber fabric to the right size |
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| Laying down the fabric on the other half of the mold |
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| Putting the wing down |
Repeat for additional layers.
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| A couple smaller sections with carbon fiber wrapped on them |
Next, prepare your materials for vacuum bagging. You will need a piece of peel ply and breather for each section, and vacuum bags. Make those ahead of time so that you will have them on hand after you're done putting down epoxy. Mix your epoxy, slather it on, and wrap the epoxied section in peel ply and breather.
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| Breather and peel ply |
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| Smoothing over the peel ply after epoxying |
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| Wrapping the breather over it all |
Stick these pieces into the vacuum bags, seal the bags, and turn on the vacuum.
We also started the seat - we are going to do 3 layers, add a foam core for ribbing, and three more layers on top of the core.
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| Costi and Kevin laying up the seat |
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| Starting to pull vacuum |
The impact attenuator was also attached today:
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