Re: Foam War Machine and Gatling Gun with Stronger Mount and other WM weaponry!
I promise not to cross post everything :behave and apologize to those of you following both my IM builds, I just want to cross post relevant information and the Micarta info is related to both of my builds!:$
Making progress today! :lol
Resin applied to IM MK3 parts! and working on making the Micarta composite material for the orbital hinges for my helmets.
I was wondering how to hang my pep parts to cure as we went to all plastic hangers in our home, so no metal hangers to cut up mommy dearest! :angry
The masking tape worked great!!
Since I had the resin out I thought I'd try my hand at some homemade Micarta. I need to start expirementing now..
The material came up when I asked my brother in law,who is part Mcguyver and part Edison, for some ideas about materials for the orbital hinges that Mightyjohn designed for our IM helmets. Blue prints in hand, I showed him the plan and told him my thoughts.
I was all for aluminum or brass,but machining metal is out of my wood working tools realm. Plus the machining would need to be tight and smooth.:sick He told me that he thought that something light but very strong like a composite material would turn the trick better. He suggested micarta..
The trouble with the metals would be machining all the compound curves and inner slits the armatures follow. The trouble with composites are that professionally made ones like Micarta are hideously expensive like 800-1200$ for 4x8 sheets and that is the really cheap stuff! :eek
He uses "homemade" Micarta to make knife handles and says it is almost as hard as light metal or really stiff plastic, yet it sands and works like wood.
Here is the method I used.
Homemade Micarta - YouTube
There are literally a bazzilion videos up so pick a narrator you like and give it a look.
I know I needed to stay thin,(you can make this stuff as thick as a boat hull if you wanted) but our visors are really light and we are working in a very small area, so for this first attempt I went with 2 pieces red construction paper, 1 layer denim, 2 pieces red construction paper, 1 layer denim (with the weave opposite the other) and then 2 pieces red construction paper.
Each layer had a coat of resin applied then they were wrapped in wax paper between 2 blocks of wood and compressed as hard as my wood working vise would compress it. Since I don't need huge pieces I was able to do this without C-clamps in the vise jaws. Plus industrial micarta is made under tons of pressure, i wanted as tight a piece as I could get, so compression must be high. You need to watch out for material slipping/squirting as the compression makes the material want to push out of the wax paper. A little finnesse and knowing it does that ahead of time will save you a wasted run.
I used 5 oz of resin for the one piece due to the layers and wanting good resin penetration.
Torqued the vise and ;
It really squeezed out a lot! Make sure the wax paper is looped on the bottom of the micarta so it doesnt drip on the floor.
Well back to pepakura! I going to let that cure till tomorrow and uncompress it then.
I will be posting how it goes... I may not be able to fully motorize my helmets by halloween, but hopefully I can get the MK3 and WM helmets geared and ready to accept servos..that way I can open and close the visors by hand at least.
we'll see.:unsure
