Casting Honeycomb Aluminum

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C

crokett

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Joined
Dec 4, 2012
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610
Location
Mebane, North Carolina
Someone sent me a few square feet of it. It is 2 3/32" or so skins of aluminum with a honeycomb between them. It is surprisingly strong stuff. Anyway, the idea is to fill the honeycomb with resin. I peeled the skin off one side. I'd planned to pour the resin in and use the aluminum itself as the form - the other skin would keep the resin in. I tried 2 blanks last night. What I forgot was with no way for the air to get out, the resin would not want to go into the voids. So I am thinking now I will have to use a mold, peel the skin off both sides, pour resin into the mold then sink the honeycomb in the resin. Either that or a syringe to fill in all those little voids. :biggrin: Any other suggestions?
 
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David,

I live 15 minutes northeast of Hillsborough, and have both a vacuum chamber and a pressure pot (as well as plenty of PR and Alumilite). If you'd like to come over and experiment sometime, I'd be happy to help out.

Regards,
Eric
 
If you're using a vacuum chamber with relatively small volume you could use one of the brake bleeder hand vacuums which are available on sale at HF and such quite reasonably at times. They should pull enough vacuum for this, not sure how high a vacuum the pull but probably over 25 inches.
 
Eric

thanks for the offer. I might do that sometime. Tomorrow I am going to try treating the honeycomb as an embedment. If it works I will build a larger mold and do it that way. I have cast 20 or so blanks so far. Not all have worked out, but none of them was because air, etc in the blank.
 
Just a thought...... if you are casting with PR, you can thin the uncatalysed resin by heating it in a warm water bath (the resin goes into a vessel and then surrounded with 125 degree water) or by placing the resin under a heat source for a few minutes (I use a 250 halogen work light for this).

Water thin resin is easier to get into all the voids, then some type of vibration table (be creative) will then force air to the surface.

That MIGHT be enough to eliminate the voids without pressure or vacuum?
 
I just picked up some honeycomb material that is open from each side and here is what I am thinking of trying.

I am going to mix up a batch of resin, pour it into my mold and then sink the honeycomb into it slowly to force the resin up thru the cells, then pressurize it. I should help the cells become filled and the pressure hopefully will take care of the rest.

I am hoping to do this over the weekend, so I will know results soon.

Mike B
 
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