Henry,
Another tip with vacuum chambers or bell jars if you're having to cycle
them a lot (between vacuum and atmospheric pressure), and want to minimize
time, is instead of refilling the chamber with air on each cycle, you can
instead back fill with dry nitrogen. Air has moisture in it, and most parts
(especially porous ones) can absorb moisture pretty quickly, which then
takes a long time to pump back down. Back filling with dry nitrogen (or
some other dry inert gas) avoids letting in the moisture, so it will cycle
faster.
~Jon
On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 4:13 PM, Henry Vanderbilt <
hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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