One small correction on Forte -- they do create tapered sections
on request. The profile is determined by mandrel onto which they
braid it. The main restriction is that a spar can only have a
single taper; trying to taper both ends with continuous fibers would
obviously make it impossible to remove the mandrel.
That doesn't mean they're a good choice for any given project,
though. I just wanted to bring up their technology and some
ballpark pricing in order to have something for comparison.
- Mike
Rob Denney wrote:
Fantastic bit of kit. If it all worked, I'm pretty sure you would get your money's worth over the build of the boat, excluding your time. It is no problem structurally to join tubes, but the bend characteristics of a mast would need some thought. And the weight would increase. You also have to build the mandrels, which gets tricky for some section shapes. There may also be issues removing larger items from the mandrel, but nothing that a car, a tree and multipart purchase wouldn't fix.
Drawback of filament winding is that you can't taper the laminate or easily add lengthwise fibres. The solution to both is the same. The lengthwise fibres are added as sheet material, then overwrapped to consolidate them.
The Forte braided system can't do this so tapers are tricky. But for straight tubes, it is great, and those prices are excellent.
We get our masts etc from Etamax who have a 6m winder which, for some jobs they dry wind, then infuse. It can also be used as a big lathe to make the mandrels.
rob
On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 9:30 PM, Gardner Pomper <gardner@networknow.org> wrote:
Hi,
I thought this http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1157143472/x-winder-the-worlds-first-desktop-filament-winder was something relevant to this group. It is a carbon fiber filament winder. The largest model they are talking about is a 6" diameter and 8' long, but I wondered if it might be possible to join the lengths together.
I was hoping that someone more knowledgeable than me (which would be all of you! <grin>) might contribute their thoughts.
- Gardner
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