Vacuum pumps

[Slyde]

Wanting to do a small modification/repair to a carbon foil. I don’t own a vacuum bagging pump but have used one some years ago. I have lots of laminating experience but I will need to vacuum this carbon laminate to do a good job. Is there any good cheap solution for a vacuum pump for a small job? If I buy a decent pump it’s going to cost me about what it would cost to have the job done commercially anyway. Seems that the cheapest pumps are over 5 hundred dollars around here.

[Blackrat]

Any fridge compressor from a scrap yard will pull a decent vacuum. They cost about $10 down here

[Bille]

... They cost about $10 down here

YEP -- about 20HG for Free ; and I used an old Beer-Keg, for a holding tank !

My refrigerator pump was Free ; I just drove around , and looked for one
on trash-day. Craigs-list has them for free also ; if Ya look every day, you
will probably find one. I've known of people, (Paying) to have the old refrigerator
taken away.

Bille

[plummet]

Yeah fridge pump is cool. But if it's a small one off why not make the repair wrap the shit out of it then suck it down using your kite pump plugged in backwards. Then wrap it some more for good measure.

I wouldn't bother making a fridge pump set up for one small repair

[rtz]

Check the price and the specs:

https://m.harborfreight.com/air-vacuum- ... 96677.html

[downunder]

^
Uhm, thats a ventury pump? U know that, right?

[Slyde]

Cheers guys, Ill look for a fridge pump next week. Might have to buy the whole fridge though;)

[andrewjohn]

I presume there are laws in NZ about degassing of fridges and not just releasing ozone depleting gasses into the atmosphere?

[tmcfarla]

If you don’t need much compression, you could use extra large vacuum bags (from amazon) and a household vacuum cleaner. It pulls hard enough to hold everything in place and should be fine if you don’t need to follow any complex curves.

[airsail]

If your repair is convex rather than concave, just lay up as you would for standard vac bag eg, peel ply and breather, then wrap tightly with clear packing tape. The packing tape has quite a lot of stretch and provides good pressure. You can even add extra breather, wood blocks and clamps for more pressure. I often use this method when repairing surfboard rails or wing leading edges. Works well and is much easier than dragging out the vac pump.