[AR] Re: How to make carbon-carbon composites?

  • From: Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2015 16:13:18 -0700

Impregnating a porous part with a liquid in a vacuum chamber isn't hard at all. Immerse your part in the liquid in an open-top container, put a bell jar over it, pull a vacuum and watch the air bubbling out of the part, then when it stops bubbling, shut down your pump and let the air back in to force the liquid into the part's porosities. (Repeat the cycle a couple of times if you want to be really thorough.)

This is not advanced high-tech - I learned how to do it in my first job out of high school, potting custom electronic assemblies in epoxy.

It could get mildly more complicated if your liquid has toxic fumes, or you can't expose the part to air; you might have to do all this under a vent hood, or in a simple glove box supplied with a suitable non-reactive atmosphere. Still not high-tech.

Henry


On 12/10/2015 2:28 PM, Oliver Arend (Redacted sender oarend for DMARC) wrote:

Thanks to everyone who replied.

After being cured, the laminate is then pyrolized to convert the resin
to carbon.

I think up to this point it's realistic to carry out oneself. Pyrolysis
under vacuum would be hard, but in an e. g. Argon atmosphere it should
be doable.

> This is then impregnated with furfural alcohol in a vacuum chamber,
then cured and pyrolized again

This is where it gets beyond what I consider realistic.

Of course a graphite nozzle is the easy way out.

Oliver



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