New Canard Design - Oshkosh 2016

[Tom Mann]

For those who are interested in learning more about Vacuum Infusion, here is the schedule.

 Advanced Composite Infusion
 Monday, July 25 · 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM
 Forum Stage 5

 Advanced Composite Infusion Demo 1
 Tuesday, July 26 · 10:00 AM - 4:30 PM
 Replica Fighters HQ

 Advanced Composite Infusion Demo 2
 Wednesday, July 27 · 10:00 AM - 4:30 PM
 Replica Fighters HQ

 Advanced Composite Infusion Demo 3
 Thursday, July 28 · 10:00 AM - 4:30 PM
 Replica Fighters HQ

 Advanced Composite Infusion Reveal
 Friday, July 29 · 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
 Replica Fighters HQ

[Tom Mann]

Well it was quite an experience and learning opportunity.

I got to Oshkosh Sunday around noon in time to help setup the tents where the demo was going to take place.



Monday was spent sealing and the molds (7 coats) and then adding another 7 coats of release.



Tuesday and Wednesday were spent installing the actual dry fabric and core materials. Those who were there can confirm, we experienced the typical EAA event weather and it did rain ..... a bunch on Wednesday.



Thursday started out raining at 8:15 AM. Temp was not as desired. We had 8 molds that we were infusing. The first four were using a urethane based resin system. This was used on the Star Lite aircraft fuselage. The Endurance epoxy system was used for the new canard design. All materials were donated by several different sponsors. One of those products was a combination peel-ply and flow media. We had this in the first four molds for the Star Lite. We discovered that it would not hold up when using the urethane resin.



In reality, this is the best situation when doing a demo like this. If everything goes right, you never learn the techniques to resolve the issues as they came up. Russ Emanis showed how to identify problem areas and then resolve them.



So after identifying the conflict between the urethane resin and the flow media, we set about pulling the bags off the other three molds and reverted back to the proven Greenflow and peel-ply. The parts were re-plumbed and we built new bags. By now we were getting pretty proficient at doing this but after all, we needed to get 7 more parts to infuse.



So of course it starts raining again. At this point we have 4 of the 8 infused.

Work continued until 10:30 to get all 8 infused. After the second wave of rain the temperature really dropped.



Friday morning comes and the parts are too green to de-mold. There was a review of everything we did during the course of the week. Once the sun came out, we moved the molds out from under the tents so they could warm up. By late afternoon they were pretty much cured.



Saturday morning the parts were de-molded and on display.

A picture of the upper fuselage half is pictured below.



So here's what we have:

We built the parts in a tent in really crappy weather conditions using new molds that had never had parts pulled from them and still came up with some beautiful parts.



Imagine what we could do in a controlled environment.

[dorr]

How'd it go - is there a website update somewhere?

Beagle

[Tom Mann]

For anyone interested in the demo, here is a link to all the pictures and video taken at Oshkosh. http://www.innegratech.com/aciosh16

[Tom Mann]

As you can see by the photo below, the flanges have not been trimmed off and the flow media & peel ply have not been stripped off yet.
 The upper and lower portions of the fuselage are just setting in place to get a feel for how this is going to look.

 The weight (as pictured) is 26 lbs.
 Of course this does not include the bulkheads, instrument panel, landing gear, etc., but those are pretty tough numbers to beat.

[dorr]

any more photographs on the Osh show?

Beagle

[Tom Mann]

The Innegra Tech link previously posted has all the photos & video from the demo.

Here's a Video Link of a cool animation of this bird dressed out in Air Force paint.
https://youtu.be/JF1XEsZelPI