Past Projects:
I've done too many projects to showcase them all in one sitting so I will gradually add each one with a quick little summary. Now lets begin!

Carbon Fiber RC airplane:
This project was conducted through my awesome composites class at OIT with Professor Stuart.

Dimensions
We started the project by taking an existing RC airplane and taking down dimensions which were then inputed into solidworks. Yan one of my partners did the modeling based from these dimensions for a new fuselage. We located the critical internal components from the original plane.

Plug
For a male mold we started with some leftover extruded polysterene from the Formula 1 project. It is essentially high R-value building insulation foam. Very low cost, and large in volume. With the shop's band saw I was able to quickly able to get a rough shape of the fuselage. Using some sand paper I was able to form out the shape in less than half an hour.


Layup
A class or two later we began layup of the carbon fiber and resin. I think it was 6 oz. carbon fiber we used approximately 2.5 layers on most of the body. I say 2.5 layers because the main body where it was flat was 2 layers, but with overlap over the curved portions the build up increased to 3 layers. It was simple 105/205 West System epoxy. As I recall, we had about 45 minutes of working time. I was working with primarily with Marc on this one part.

Vacuum Bagging
After layup the part was looking good, we had pretty much all the wrinkles out, but as I had never done vacuum bagging before was keen on trying it. Pretty much everyone there had no experience with vacuum bagging before. We placed the part in the 2 sheets of plastic and used sticky putty to seal the bag. There were a few issues with sealing, a bit more putty and we had that figured out. The old rickity compressor had the air out in about 15 minutes (25 psi of vacuum). We locked the bag and turned off the compressor.

Result
A week later we took the cured part out of the bag, to our dismay there was a few wrinkles caused by the bag simply crinkling up on the strange geometry of our part. Observing how much resin was pulled out of the part was a little perplexing (very little if at all - like 2 tablespoon's worth). I came to the conclusion with respect to my previous composite experiences that hand layup is better for making odd shaped composite parts. Unless the absolute best strength/weight ratio is desired in your part, vacuum forming will prove to be most troublesome with complicated parts. By that I mean you can get wrinkles, stress concentrations where you may not want them... With the bandsaw, and some drills we reinstalled the planes components, and made some test runs.

Alas none of us know how to fly RC planes correctly, and we crashed fairly quickly (first try? lol) The plane proved to be too heavy even with 2 layers of carbon fiber and a bit of foam, to sustain lift. Oh well it was fun, and with a toss or two we were able to get some short flights, and some horrific crashes. The carbon fiber fuselage took the beatings like a champ! No failures there! The propeller was the first part to fail, and that was the end of our fun :P