Hi, I liked the article on making fiberglass/carbon fiber blades and would like to do the same. My blades need to be 8 1/2' w/ 17' diameter. From what I read, I'll need about an 18" tube to form my blades on. Does that sound about right? Did you put something down on your form and over the blade resin when the bag was vacuumed out to keep the resin from adhering to the form and the vacuum bag? Where would one look for carbon fiber cloth? I’m using three blades so should I mount them on a hub and then hang them for balancing? The aircraft foam and vacuum bagging wasn’t clear. Did you use a plastic bag around the form to compress the resin/fiberglass/carbon fiber and get the air bubbles out? Did you massage the vacuumed blade to help this compression and air removal?
If you look in the first photo you can see what we call pucky tape. it is a double sided sticky tape. you can see the roll of it lying next to the steel pipe. this tape is what we attached the vacuum bag to. before we started to layup glass and carbon fiber we used a mold release wax and another chemical that acts like a plastic barrier that peels off real easy called PVA. most of the materials used in this project are specialized materials that you can't get at a hardware store. this project was not cheep and I would not recommend this method for someone who has never had any experience with fiberglass and vacuum bagging.
[ Edited Mon Feb 16 2009, 01:38AM ] Wind Turbines are a lot funner to watch than solar panels
