Sunday 24 January 2010

First prototype underway...

I layed up the first prototype helmet from the pooleman mould on Thursday with a carbon, kevlar, glass, glass, kevlar construction with epoxy resins. The production didn't go entirely smoothly as the gel coat was still tacky as I was doing the carbon which made it difficult to properly lay out and compress the weave into the correct shape for the helmet. Likewise my kevlar at the moment is a standard weave and not a twill weave so won't fold into the helmet shape in one piece so this will look scrappy and won't help with the strength of the finished piece.


To fix this I will wait more time after the gel coat before applying the carbon next time so that it is not tacky and can be layed in properly before a single piece of pre-whetted biaxial glass is layed ontop which will whet out the carbon and hold it down. I'm going to source a different supplier for kevlar whocan do it in a twill weave which will also fold into shapre without being cut. Hopefully prototype two will start late next week.
Laters.

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