Home Built Infusion Foil.

[GrantL]

This is a build project I started 6 months ago , today all finished.
I Designed using Autocad 3d images of my mast , fuselage and wings after finding out as much info I could off the net .
From my 3d design I made accurate plugs (The actual parts in timber , bog etc) . From the plugs I created split female moulds of each part.
Once I had the moulds , I made my carbon parts.

I have only ridden my foil for about 10 hours , but I have added a short low quality video of my crash test dummy doing the test drive for me.
I have pics of the various stages along the way which I will post.

https://youtu.be/J9Jyd4u-81c

[Kamikuza]

Rangitoto, huh?

What did your guinea pig think?
Gonna sell them?

[plummet]

high quality. give us more pictures man

[DartBoard]

Great work! looks like real pro job. How did it perform? Keen to see some photos. Well done!

[rynhardt]

Looks the beez kneez.. Did you cnc the plugs?

[GrantL]

Rangitoto, huh?

What did your guinea pig think?
Gonna sell them?

Correct Rangi in background.
Only rode for 10min but was pretty impressed, especially the setup of front AOA and stabiliser angle.
So was pretty happy after spending so much time building it.

And know I will not be selling any. To me as a mechanical engineer, it is about the design and build process. I will be building another one next winter, and definitely more wings. But I need to learn to ride the beast first. That is my goal for now

[GrantL]

high quality. give us more pictures man

Thanks plummet.
Here is a couple more of the finish product.

[GrantL]

Looks the beez kneez.. Did you cnc the plugs?

No cnc machining. For a home build that's cheating. The only thing you save by machining moulds is time. If you make plugs accurately using datums and templates almost anything is possible.

[GrantL]

Great work! looks like real pro job. How did it perform? Keen to see some photos. Well done!

Thanks DartBoard.
I will add some more pics of the build.

[GrantL]

Mast Moulding.
Once you have a polished and waxed plug you can insert into a board of some sort. The mast being linear means that I only had to sink it down to the centerline. I routered out my board and inserted mast. Leaving 1-2mm around the edge, I filled with modeling clay and trimmed to centerline. You can buy pattern making fillers if you want to do this also.
The other really essential thing that you have to do is add 2 tapered dowels (round buttons 10-20 mm diameter with at least a 5 degree taper). These will be used to locate the finished 2 female moulds together later.
As with any mould making the steps are
1.Tooling gel coat
2.A very thin layer of chopped matt and tooling vinyl Ester resin. This layer is the critical one. No air pockets in the laminate otherwise under vacuum your mould will pop the gel coat into the air pocket.
3.Add another thin layer of laminate and fully cure 24hrs.
4.Now multiple layers of laminate to end up with a thickness of 5mm or more.
5.Add some steel shafts full length of mould. So one each side of the profile. Laminate them on well. Vinyl Ester shrinks so I needed to be really sure that the mould would not warp, twist or shrink.
That's pretty much what I did.