Go to ground.news/superfastmatt to spot media bias and become a smarter news consumer. Subscribe through my link for 40% off unlimited access this month.
There’s a far simpler and much cheaper solution: Just avoid all mainstream media completely. Job done. Why is this a better policy than paying this sponsor? Just listen carefully to what followed “Backed by…”!!👀🙄 Try Redacted as a credible alternative. Some of us stopped listening to the mainstream fear prawn peddlers soon after 9/11, and arguably we were very late catching up.
It pleased me more than I ever thought it possibly could to see my sticker in the , "My favorite stickers...pride of place" pile. This is the deepest parasocial interaction that I have ever had with a TH-camr.
I cannot wait to see a land speed car covered in stickers, with a not small number of them being of half naked anime woman and "for rectal use only", going faster than 200mph and breaking the record for the 1000cc stream liner class on the Bonneville Salt Flats. God I love this channel.
DO NOT TEMPT MATT!!!! We all know he will say something like, "but then I ran out of time so we just used the stickers" smash cut to the entire back of the speeder made from stickers.....parachute pops out.....its stickers. For rectal use only, and anime stickers. With I
Dear Algorithm, SFM is a very good teacher of improper methods of engineering. Please add his channel to the group of competent engineers. They all deserve to see how good and bad ideas sound the same. Thousands of us love this guy.
Neighbors with projects are great because I'm a neighbor with projects. If I see a neighbor with a project I offer assistance for heavy lifting and any unskilled work they need. I know that those neighbors won't question why I have to idle some of my cars all the way out of the neighborhood before I can accelerate :)
Everytime I do a building or lanscaping project my neighbors give me the side eye. That's kool because my house and yard are way better than theirs. Suck that.
When we do large carbon fiber plate infusions at the school i go to, we use flow media (basically fancy plastic mesh) above the peel ply that has one end connected to the resin side spiral tube. On the vaccum side we also have a spiral tube, but that tube is connected to a strip of resin break material (tightly woven material that resin hates going through, so you dont get resin into your vacuum port). The flow material gets the resin over the top of the part quickly, and then the resin break stops the resin to a crawl. At that point the resin has nowhere else to go but the small distance downwards (through the peel ply) into the fiber, where you want it. The peel ply prevents the flow material from having any impact on the surface finish. Biggest contributing factors to the exothermic runaway in the pot is having too much resin in it or using a resin with too quick of a pot life (check the TDS). Resins cure far far faster in the pot than in the part, so i would partition out your resin and hardener into multiple batches, and while the first batch is being sucked into the part, mix the next batch, making sure to add it to the pot before any air can make it into the tube. I would bet money that the reason that infusion resin required a post cure is to increase that cure time/pot life so its less likely to exotherm in the pot. Its really nice seeing you try vaccum bagging in your garage, even if it didnt turn out as anticipated. Even with the troubles that come along with it, it shows that it can be done at home rather than shelling out buckets of money for premade panels. Once waterjets reach more of a consumer pricepoint, the stuff people will be making at home from composites will only get even more wild.
Oh God... The moment you said "flat sheets" I knew what I was gonna watch... I consider these large flat panels to be supremely cheap. And I do quite a bit of CF/GF work.
Almost half a million subscribers, roughly a quarter million watching at any given time; and a lonely guy in Massachusetts yelling hell yeah At his phone !! I’ve had a few turbo Miata’s, your informative videos have helped me make all sorts of projects come to life that I didn’t think I could take on until watching you blunder your way through it. Thanks for letting us small fish know that anything is possible , so long as you stay in a holiday in and watch some super fast Matt, all is good
next time you need some flat(ish) fiberglass check out some junkyards. Some box trucks and large semi trailers have sides/roofs made out of glass. A big panel of that might be a more gooder starting point for what you're doing.
Matt, your try no 1 was actually your best, worked with wacum infusion for 10 years, what you needed was 6 wacum tubes and 4 inlet tubes, and resin set time off 1 hour (not cure time (cure 12 hours)), as the resin progress and reach your first wacum lines,you block the off, now down to 4.block the next ones, down to 2 and you will close to the end??? wacum infusion is trial and error,learn from smaller pieces first (or leave that to future Matt)
When I first got into the parts trade about 10 years ago, I had the Ford dealership in town return used oil to me. I noticed when I went to put it back on the shelf. When I called them about it, they had put it in the engine, drained it, and brought it back to me.
I could not care less about car DIY videos, but your channel (You) is at another level, I love your weird sense of humor, don’t ever change it, it’s the best in TH-cam nowadays. Keep going. Regards from Spain.
I saw my sticker for a few frames! Honestly this sticker bomb idea is a fantastic way to help fund the car and engage with your audience. And it's fun!!
16:06 - HAHAHA the RED sticker saying "If this is blue, you're driving too fast"... DANG! You'd need some SERIOUS power to weight numbers for that to happen! 🤔😏😉🤣🤣🤣 😎🇬🇧
A few tips. First, you can chamfer the edges of the aluminum and they will integrate properly into the layup. If you were doing a wet layup, you can also make a paste out of the epoxy and something like micro-balloons or chopped fiber to fill the space. Second, they make a product called "flow media" to help resin (and also any residual air or offgassed gasses) flow through an infusion layup. This helps substantially, Third, you can do a wet layup like you did for your final sheet with epoxy resin and then pull a vacuum. Be sure not to get resin where you intend to put your gasket tape; mask that off with painters tape and peel it right before you are going to put the film on. Relevant products include "perforated release film" "breather fabric" and the peel ply I believe you are already using.
I got a couple of EXPERIMENTAL decals coming your way. I work in the experimental aircraft world. I would definitely classify your car as experimental lol keep up the good work.
Resin infusion is such a pain, that's why lots of parts have a layer of coloured gel coat applied first. Best method I found was a hybrid of the two. Paint down a layer af gel coat, if you don't want the fabric textured finish.. Wet lay glass and resin, then peel ply and a blanket / fleece on top. Then bag the whole lot. You will be amazed how much resin you pull out. Parts are so much stiffer and ring. Foam cores and metal inserts can also easily be added.. And yes trim afterwards expect to scrap at least 50mm..
@Superfastmatt - if you need to bond in metal strapping (or wood, or cheeze...etc) if you mix some resin with colloidal silica, flocked cotton or some other thickener into a PASTE and then trowel it along the edges of the metal bar stock, it will then form a "ramp" of sorts for the fiberglass cloth overlay to transition up and over the bar stock. Think speed bump. Let the paste sit there and solidify for a bit before adding the cloth over the top and finishing the layup. Learned that building my Long-EZ...
Expecting a complete SuperfastMatt breakdown of the sticker skin drag coefficient, additional weight, also eventually how the salt broke down the adhesive causing a giant rooster tail cloud of stickers to cover the salt flats.
I don't have a sticker, but you're an ok guy (I think) I really enjoy the way you effortlessly do the most complicated things, before fubar'ing the most simple things on camera, just to keep us entertained.
For that bottom piece here is the strategy I would use: You will be doing two layups. I know it is tempting to do one but two is going to help you get the shape you want with nice edges and a smooth, flat bottom. Get some clean plastic sheeting that will release well, probably about 4x as much as you need to make one vacuum bag. Step 1, put the bottom of your vacuum bag on the table. Step 2, get some thin double side tape and tape your aluminum strips in place on top of the plastic. Step 3, cut your fiberglass slightly oversize (probably +1.5" on all edges) in both length and width, however many layers you want, I suggest 3 or 4. Step 4, get a piece of plastic about twice as wide as your table and a bit longer, this is where you are going to wet out your fiberglass. Step 5, when you wet your first piece of fiberglass, use a grooved roller to work the epoxy in to the fiberglass and to work the bubbles out. Just work fast because you need to wet out and place all but one piece of fiberglass for this layup. Step 6, lay each piece of wet fiberglass over the aluminum strips, one at a time and use a tool to work the fiberglass in to the corners so there is little to no empty corner area on the bottom. Step 7, after the wet fiberglass is laid, put a peel ply and absorption ply on top, seal up the vacuum bag, pull a vacuum and let it cure. Step 8, after removing the cured fiberglass from the table, trim the edges about 1/64" undersize,, sand the bottom (aluminum side) rough to remove any release agents and if there are gaps around the aluminum, mix up some epoxy and microspheres to fill those in and sand it flat after they cure. Step 9, lay out another vacuum bag (maybe like a taco) on the table and another sheet for wetting your last piece of fiberglass. Step 10, wet out your last piece of fiberglass, lay it on your vacuum bag and spread a thin layer of epoxy on the bottom side of the piece you trimmed earlier, then stick it on top of the wet fiberglass, fold the excess of the oversized piece up and over to wrap the cut edges. Add peel ply over the top and absorption ply over that. Make sure the edges are folded up nice and tight, then seal the vacuum bag, pull a vacuum and let cure. When you pull that out it should not have anything really jagged to trim, the bottom.should be flat and there shouldn't be any voids. The vacuum bags should have kept your resin percentage low but wetting it out before laying it makes dry spots very unlikely. On the other hand, weight isn't much of an issue so don't worry about slightly high resin ratios and add an extra ply if you are worried about strength. After a few failed wet layups the group I was in figured out that wetting out pre-cut pieces of CF on a flat piece of plastic before placing them in the mold fixed almost all of our dry spot issues and was easier to do before the epoxy kicked because we could wet most of the pieces simultaneously and wet the rest while we were laying the first pieces in the mold. You might need more team to get thaose simultaneous processes working but it turned a scramble in to a much lower stress process. You can modify those steps to do your other pieces but don't try to simplify them, that's as simple as we could get while producing good parts.
I’ve had similar issues with fiberglass, every single time I’ve done it. One big lesson I think I’ve finally learned is that no matter how well you think you scraped the sides of the mixing container, you missed some, and you will have a few sticky places that will never cure, ever. Mix the crap out of it then transfer it to a new container and mix it again, this gets rid of every single bit of pure resin and pure hardness. The other issue is whether it’s old, and whether or not it’s ever frozen, and 32°F isn’t necessarily freezing to some chemicals, get the resin from a real fiberglass place. All this “advice” from someone less talented than you, so grain of salt here.
yep. I worked at an auto parts store for a while and I can confirm, people return old oil all the time. (or atleast try to) I always checked to see if seals were opened, even if i returned something with an opened seal I would never let it get back onto the shelf.
We were watching this episode and let me tell you how excited we were to see not only our sticker but also the letter. This Idea of yours is gold. Thank you.
It's 8:00 p.m. on a Sunday, and this video was the best part of my weekend so far. If I could pay some media giant to make more of this, they'd find some way to mess it up. I do understand making a video for a quarter million people might seem lonely, but I really appreciate Matt uploading this view into his natural process. I feel less lonely knowing there's somebody else who works this way
I think everyone should have to work retail for a few months and food service for a few months before you're allowed to shop at a store or eat at a restaurant. I worked at Advance for a couple years in high school. It does not surprise me even a little bit that someone would try to return used motor oil in a bottle of resin. It does not even shock me that the auto parts store employees would fail to check it and would restock it to the shelf. It also does not surprise me that you might find an ancient, expired bottle of resin...some of the stuff on those shelves has been there a long time.
I might even do the same thing...if it was Walmart or HomeDepot...or Amazon. ok, no I wouldn't even with them, not this level of nasty. But honestly Matt should have immediately recognized it was not right. And he could have used his epoxy and done the same thing. I've not heard of having to bake infusion epoxy, that seems very odd.
@@username34159265The O'Reilly's that I worked at had some stuff on the shelves that I'm pretty sure had been there since the store opened like 15 years ago
What you need is some spiral tubing. It goes inside the bag, and creates a long section where the resin can continue flowing unrestricted because the tube doesn't fully crush like the fiberglass does. So you'd put the tube at the edge of the longest section, connect 1 or 2 ports to it (2 from opposite sides works great), and it'll allow the resin to get distributed through the entire part instead of from just your ports.
13:40 The circular woven filter worn by the person on the left, which I suspect is a P100, is not intended for the VOC fumes from the resin. The person on the right appears to be using the pink plastic respirator cartridges, which are correct.
A few decades ago, back when custom vans were the fashion, I built one with a full custom interior and ran out of budget before I could paint it. I had been collecting bumper stickers, and other sticky labels and such for years and decided to cover the van with them, starting at the back and working my way forward so they overlapped and wouldn't get peeled off at Warp Speed. A friend clear coated it once it was labeled, but before he did, we had to give the van a name. It was the fashion. A friend of his cut-out a reflective name in glitter, edged with a gold pin stripe. We called it "American Graffiti". It was perfect.
16:08 I like the red shift sticker, approaching so fast that light is compressing from your perspective. It is not blue shift b/c the universe expands and there isn't much coming towards us besides Andromeda. Most of what we see is turning red in the sky.
I can’t wait to see how this car turns out and how it does in the salt flats. With luck I’ll be able to come out and check out this summer. Keep up the good work, man.
You can get cheap flat panels. Shower surrounds. Tonu covers and truck shells are great sources. I would suggest lysol for applying your aluminum. Mike
Shower tubs and camper shells are typically made of chopped fiberglass and are rather thick and heavy and rough. Really nasty stuff that I wouldn't try to use for anything, much less a racecar. They're also usually not flat.
You couldn’t have made a better advert for the pre-made fibreglass sheets you mentioned at the start. This seems to be your model. But please don’t stop making these ads, it’s amazing 😁
Best giggle on the internet! I made some door cards for my mk1 escort 10 years back. I used a large piece of thick tempered glass as the base, and the final wet laid method you used. I went the full hog and used West Systems 105 epoxy resin. They honestly turned out glass smooth.😂 🇦🇺🤛🏼🤜🏼😎🍀☮️☮️☮️
Having worked as an epoxy formulator for people making composites for the past decade, you really need to get an oven that's capable of heating the entire piece uniformly. You risk having a weak zone in the middle with your method.
I'm in a formula student team whose car is made of a carbon fiber monicoque, and more composites. The monocoque itself is made from preimpregnated carbon fiber that gets autoclaved into form. For post-curing resin parts, we just have a Sauna. There's an ESP32 controlling the whole show in a control panel outside, with multiple choices of temperature probes: One somewhere in the air, or just stick one inside the part.
Last time I worked as an FG fab, it took 12 hours from removing the leftovers of the damaged part from the vehicle, fixing, painting and re-attaching the part back in. Within two days it was almost as bad as it was when I pulled it off. The inner structure I created from a scrap pile helped keeping the part together. I got paid a lunch and a bag of tobacco. Also, that was the last time I worked on that shop. Watching these videos and getting flashbacks from my working years, it is difficult to decide which one of us is crazier or less intelligent..
I can't tell you how many times I've opened a box of plug wires to find used ones in there. The wood grain is genius. I'm thinking K-Car/Minivan/Family Truckster woody theme.
my Ground News subscription changed my life: when i learned that all stories exist on a single dimension of left to right, and they determined what went where, i was liberated. it's an honor to pay them to think for me.
As someone who spent years making flat GRP panels, it's been quite easy for me to see all the places you went wrong. This is a first for me in your videos, so for some reason, I'm relishing it! 🤣🤣 You'd never believe how easy it is to get wonderful panels that can be used for all sorts of shapes and mouldings. Like, super easy. 🙈
Adding to what joshua said about thermal runaway is the smaller the surface area in the container, the faster it will heat up. A wide and shallow vessel will stay cool longer and if it's shallow enough will never get hot. Resin doesn't dry, it cures so all that surface area doesn't make it set faster, but the heat will. Heat increases the speed of any chemical reaction.
My dad builds a lot of boat parts with fibreglass. His method is like your last method but he then adds a plastic sheet and vacume seals the part, adding a ply wood sheet with weights if he wants the part to be smooth on both sides. He pulls a vacume on the part for a good day or two and then sands the sheet if needed.
Several years ago my buddy bought a Toyota (Hilux) pickup camper for the Gambler 500. While he was out of the shop i used this woodgrain vinyl I had sitting around and gave him some hood stripes. It looked surprisingly good and held up longer than the rest of the vehicle
Perfect, love it! The internet is full of success stories, I like that you show the real rocky paths to them. I forgot to tell you in some earlier comments on this series that epoxy is very sensitive to thermal runaway. Been there done that. But most of all it is very unhealthy. Just a quick warning about all chemicals, be careful with them, but especially when you play around with acetone, by itself its not too bad, but it will let any other substance through your skin (which is usually surprisingly protective) into your bloodstream. And acetone loves to chew through gloves :) Latex gloves are good, and rotate 2 pairs, fume them out. Use mineral spirits or specialty resin cleaners to keep your equipment clean. I'm amazed at what you are doing with fiberglass, and thank you for the tenacity! In boat building school I did the XPS CNC milling for a plug that I laminated into a mold and into a boat, but in this episode you're doing something that I haven't done yet, fiberglass stock boards. My next goal is to try stitch and glue boat building with CNC cut fiberglass flat stock, no ply. My next tip for you is to buy an aluminum de-airing roller ;) Now that you're warmed up with the flat stuff I'm sure you can easily pull of a 50/50 resin to fiberglass ratio, and push of any extra with the roller to lower the weight even more. Both poly- and vinyl-ester are great for laminating, in my experience vinyl spreads a bit better (your's looked like vinyl-ester). Unless otherwise specified, use 1% hardener, you're not in a rush. Dunk the roller and any other tools into a metal can filled with resin cleaner when you have a break from laminating, cover the can with a lid. Another reason why to avoid acetone, it melts your tools. Again, awesome stuff and awesome attitude, good luck! Oh and about the embedded aluminum, make some more fiberglass board strips (glue together the off-cuts), fill and round the sharp corners with... filler, and do the open open lamination surgery with the roller, presto.
So glad there were some AvE stickers in the pile "Do not dumb here - no dumb area" - brilliant. I like his "Danger - not only will this kill you, it will hurt the whole time you are dying". Chefs kiss.
Having helped with a few fiberglass & carbon model wing layups (3m or about 3 yards long), I can say we did successfully vacuum bag them (great finishes) but did NOT attempt to flow resin in. We layed up in mold halves, rolled on as much resin as we were comfortable with, put molds together and vacuum bagged it.
On that composite envisions infusion resin, you can let it room temp cure (but it takes about double the time and doesn’t have as high Tg). This is also what their support has said. Alternatively, premium resin tech rdr 3410 and rhd 9386 99 (or the longer pot life hardener) is an amazing infusion resin, even if not listed as such.
Thank you for being you! I broke my wrist coming out of the shower at the gym and I've been frustrated and pissed at myself and in a lot of pain. Seeing the surgeon on monday! Your upload is a welcomed solace. Hope you have a kickass week!
I am by no means any sort of expert but I've worked with vacuum infusion a few times and have two pieces of advice (if I'm wrong about anything do tell me to, politely, fuck off) 1 - Leave extra "vacuum bag sheet" then add a sort of "dog ears" to the corners of the infusion, bending the sheet. Leaving extra bag for it to settle against the fibers helps prevent dry spots and possible breakages in the bag. 2 - For bigger pieces sequencially opening resin inlets works better than having multiple inlets open at the same time, at least from my experince
Hello Super Fat matt. The infusion mesh is directional, so make sure you are following that. The resin hot pots are not a result of mixing, Its purely do to the amount of resin you are mixing. Mix smaller amounts and it will cure slower. Another trick is to thin the resin with acetone and brush that over the peel ply to fully wet it out - not aerospace approved but works well to improve peel ply texture. Or just use non porous armalon.
As someone who has done a lot of vacuum infused fiberglass and carbon parts…. You need a flow medium on top of your peel-ply. Its basically a 3d mesh that allows for high resin transmission. Its part of the scrap, and makes pealing peal ply much harder… but it works. Cover 80% ish of the final part. The runaway thermic reactions on your resin are to be expected when resin is in a bucket like that for to long. Mix a smaller starter amount and Keep topping up your bucket in small amounts at a time. the more resin is spread out and not centralized the slower it will go off.
Pig mats are the best! They make wonderful products. You keep saying " you don't know what you don't know" there is actually a name for this, the Dunning Krueger Effect. Love the content thank you!
Matt, You should try using Solarez. It reacts with the sun. You could lay up your parts in the garage and then wheel it out into the sun and in 4 or 5 minutes it is cured. I've used it many many times to make molds, body panels and parts without waiting for hours to cure before laying up the next coat. Also if need be for a night job you can use hardener and it will act like normal resin with normal cure times. I've never tried it with bagging but you should have lots of time for the resin to flow. You can also use a UV light to cure it if need be or again at night if needed without adding hardener. It's been an enormous time saver for me over the years.
With how this car is going, we're gonna have to start calling YOU Fiberglass Matt. Seriously though, I've learned so much about what not to do with composite materials from this series. Thank you, Fiberglass Matt.
FRP Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic comes in 4'x8" and 5'x10' sheets. It's 1/8" thick and its most common use is sides and roofs for semi-trailers. Lowes and Home Depot sell the 4'x8' sheets.
Weight is not as important in a land speed car as it would be in a typical race car, and the "taco" is the lower bodywork, so if anything is going to be heavy, it should be this panel. I think steel (or more reasonably, aluminum) would be a more rational choice than foam-cored or balsa-cored composite.
@@brianb-p6586 I was thinking of rigidity. A thin sheet is more prone to flutter/flex/fail. But I think you're also right that something more puncture resistant should be used - at least around pilot. Maybe a couple layers of kevlar in the layup?
Go to ground.news/superfastmatt to spot media bias and become a smarter news consumer. Subscribe through my link for 40% off unlimited access this month.
Finally a good sponsorship for a youtuber... All I've been seeing is BetterHelp and that AirUp shit
Looks at stickers . . . . gonna need another car . . . .
Quality sponsor
Dude. As a composite technician , this was painful to watch, no offense
There’s a far simpler and much cheaper solution: Just avoid all mainstream media completely. Job done. Why is this a better policy than paying this sponsor? Just listen carefully to what followed “Backed by…”!!👀🙄
Try Redacted as a credible alternative. Some of us stopped listening to the mainstream fear prawn peddlers soon after 9/11, and arguably we were very late catching up.
It pleased me more than I ever thought it possibly could to see my sticker in the , "My favorite stickers...pride of place" pile. This is the deepest parasocial interaction that I have ever had with a TH-camr.
Same here!!!
Which sticker was yours?
Same! Miata sticker bottom-right with the katakana letters.
In curious, why did a couple IFTA tags make it in the fav sticker pile?
@@youzrnaimI got a good chuckle out of the IFTAs
"Rectal Use Only” should be the name of the speeder.
This genuinely made me laugh hard 😂
super fast rect
"everything's a dildo if you're brave enough" could also work.
#getrect
One of those needs to go on the chute release handle
I cannot wait to see a land speed car covered in stickers, with a not small number of them being of half naked anime woman and "for rectal use only", going faster than 200mph and breaking the record for the 1000cc stream liner class on the Bonneville Salt Flats.
God I love this channel.
with half of those being of anime feet
No no, big titty anime girls and bjg ass@@talkingmango8658
The weird part is that premade fiberglass is expensive, I can't imagine why when it's clearly so easy as you've shown.
Going by the number of stickers you got they’ll probably be able to become a structural part of the land speed car
and slow it down, it's already slow, i mean slow it down more than it already is
DO NOT TEMPT MATT!!!! We all know he will say something like, "but then I ran out of time so we just used the stickers" smash cut to the entire back of the speeder made from stickers.....parachute pops out.....its stickers. For rectal use only, and anime stickers. With I
probably better than structural ham sandwitch
Dear Algorithm, SFM is a very good teacher of improper methods of engineering. Please add his channel to the group of competent engineers. They all deserve to see how good and bad ideas sound the same. Thousands of us love this guy.
Algorithm keeps showing me these videos. Finally subbed.
I always wonder what neighbors think about these types of projects. I also wish all my neighbors had projects like this.
No you don't, resin smell is horrible, and it can disperse quite far. The last time I played with it, I got a complaint from a guy ~50m away.
I was about to post a very similar post then thought to wait, check comments first. Excellent 😛
Neighbors with projects are great because I'm a neighbor with projects. If I see a neighbor with a project I offer assistance for heavy lifting and any unskilled work they need. I know that those neighbors won't question why I have to idle some of my cars all the way out of the neighborhood before I can accelerate :)
If i had a neighbour like him i would love to always help and learn
Everytime I do a building or lanscaping project my neighbors give me the side eye. That's kool because my house and yard are way better than theirs. Suck that.
When we do large carbon fiber plate infusions at the school i go to, we use flow media (basically fancy plastic mesh) above the peel ply that has one end connected to the resin side spiral tube. On the vaccum side we also have a spiral tube, but that tube is connected to a strip of resin break material (tightly woven material that resin hates going through, so you dont get resin into your vacuum port).
The flow material gets the resin over the top of the part quickly, and then the resin break stops the resin to a crawl. At that point the resin has nowhere else to go but the small distance downwards (through the peel ply) into the fiber, where you want it. The peel ply prevents the flow material from having any impact on the surface finish.
Biggest contributing factors to the exothermic runaway in the pot is having too much resin in it or using a resin with too quick of a pot life (check the TDS). Resins cure far far faster in the pot than in the part, so i would partition out your resin and hardener into multiple batches, and while the first batch is being sucked into the part, mix the next batch, making sure to add it to the pot before any air can make it into the tube. I would bet money that the reason that infusion resin required a post cure is to increase that cure time/pot life so its less likely to exotherm in the pot.
Its really nice seeing you try vaccum bagging in your garage, even if it didnt turn out as anticipated. Even with the troubles that come along with it, it shows that it can be done at home rather than shelling out buckets of money for premade panels. Once waterjets reach more of a consumer pricepoint, the stuff people will be making at home from composites will only get even more wild.
This
.
Also use the right resin, Total Boat has a whole thing about it on their website
Your jerry-rigged curing oven is absolutely diabolical and i love it
I wish my neighbor had a turbocharged oven
Oh God... The moment you said "flat sheets" I knew what I was gonna watch... I consider these large flat panels to be supremely cheap. And I do quite a bit of CF/GF work.
I also do a lot of Carbon Fiber/Gluten Free work.
@@AKcess_Dnied at least this time he left out the sandwich...
Almost half a million subscribers, roughly a quarter million watching at any given time; and a lonely guy in Massachusetts yelling hell yeah At his phone !! I’ve had a few turbo Miata’s, your informative videos have helped me make all sorts of projects come to life that I didn’t think I could take on until watching you blunder your way through it. Thanks for letting us small fish know that anything is possible , so long as you stay in a holiday in and watch some super fast Matt, all is good
Love Foreshadow Matt!
Getting lots of mileage out of Foreshadow Matt!
next time you need some flat(ish) fiberglass check out some junkyards. Some box trucks and large semi trailers have sides/roofs made out of glass.
A big panel of that might be a more gooder starting point for what you're doing.
@@richardlamm4826 FRP is fiber reinforced PLASTIC.
FRP is fiberglass reinforced pineapple and it’s good with rum and coconut.
That stuff is Fiberglass Reinforced Piscataway and it’s in New Jersey.
@@richardlamm4826There's one obvious word that starts with a P that hasn't been suggested yet.........
Fiber Reinforced Penis.
The end was strangely heart warming. Then again, it's also almost summer in Canada.
Keep it up, guy!
Yo Canadians, here in the South hemisphere kindly ask to take back your winter, its way too cold and we hate it. Thanks in advance
Summer in Canada, what a great week.
@@waynenocton
Painfully accurate lol
Matt, your try no 1 was actually your best, worked with wacum infusion for 10 years, what you needed was 6 wacum tubes and 4 inlet tubes, and resin set time off 1 hour (not cure time (cure 12 hours)), as the resin progress and reach your first wacum lines,you block the off, now down to 4.block the next ones, down to 2 and you will close to the end??? wacum infusion is trial and error,learn from smaller pieces first (or leave that to future Matt)
Am I missing something or what’s a wacum? Is that different from a vacuum?
@@breadloafbrad It's not cool to hassle people who don't speak English as their first language.
@@Mark_Bridges-- I don't see any hassling here, just curiosity.
@@breadloafbrad no.same
@@Mark_Bridgeswhat are you yapping about bruz
Seen a lot of crazy shit get returned to parts shops, but that's a first lol
Ripping off both the store owner and second buyer, karma's coming for this low life.
When I first got into the parts trade about 10 years ago, I had the Ford dealership in town return used oil to me. I noticed when I went to put it back on the shelf. When I called them about it, they had put it in the engine, drained it, and brought it back to me.
I could not care less about car DIY videos, but your channel (You) is at another level, I love your weird sense of humor, don’t ever change it, it’s the best in TH-cam nowadays. Keep going.
Regards from Spain.
Me too!
I saw my sticker for a few frames! Honestly this sticker bomb idea is a fantastic way to help fund the car and engage with your audience. And it's fun!!
I have a roll of those "for rectal use only" stickers. They are great to show which tools are yours.
Workmanship of the highest caliper.
16:06 - HAHAHA the RED sticker saying "If this is blue, you're driving too fast"... DANG! You'd need some SERIOUS power to weight numbers for that to happen! 🤔😏😉🤣🤣🤣
😎🇬🇧
A few tips. First, you can chamfer the edges of the aluminum and they will integrate properly into the layup. If you were doing a wet layup, you can also make a paste out of the epoxy and something like micro-balloons or chopped fiber to fill the space.
Second, they make a product called "flow media" to help resin (and also any residual air or offgassed gasses) flow through an infusion layup. This helps substantially,
Third, you can do a wet layup like you did for your final sheet with epoxy resin and then pull a vacuum. Be sure not to get resin where you intend to put your gasket tape; mask that off with painters tape and peel it right before you are going to put the film on. Relevant products include "perforated release film" "breather fabric" and the peel ply I believe you are already using.
Haha! Love the "it's all about chuck" sticker. If you get that reference, you are a true OG to Superfast Matt!
Now I want to get half baked with Matt.
I got a couple of EXPERIMENTAL decals coming your way. I work in the experimental aircraft world. I would definitely classify your car as experimental lol keep up the good work.
Matt reads most of the comments, I watch most of his videos. Nice.
Also I saw my sticker upload and that makes me happy.
Resin infusion is such a pain, that's why lots of parts have a layer of coloured gel coat applied first.
Best method I found was a hybrid of the two. Paint down a layer af gel coat, if you don't want the fabric textured finish.. Wet lay glass and resin, then peel ply and a blanket / fleece on top. Then bag the whole lot. You will be amazed how much resin you pull out. Parts are so much stiffer and ring. Foam cores and metal inserts can also easily be added.. And yes trim afterwards expect to scrap at least 50mm..
Anal use only stickers did make me laugh alot
14:38, you could use the wood grain as a backing to cover up the forged carbon. Bonus is since you have 40 m^2 of it, you can cock it up a few times
Could also do some sort of a woodie wagon thing on the side of the car.
@@fjord-fjesta PERFECT
@@fjord-fjesta That was the thought, just missed the "flat" and "envelope" part of the rule...
@Superfastmatt - if you need to bond in metal strapping (or wood, or cheeze...etc) if you mix some resin with colloidal silica, flocked cotton or some other thickener into a PASTE and then trowel it along the edges of the metal bar stock, it will then form a "ramp" of sorts for the fiberglass cloth overlay to transition up and over the bar stock.
Think speed bump. Let the paste sit there and solidify for a bit before adding the cloth over the top and finishing the layup. Learned that building my Long-EZ...
Matt got sticker shock 😂
Matt is such a fucking gem for the YT car community. We must protect him at all costs.
Sooo.... no more running at the salt flats?
Expecting a complete SuperfastMatt breakdown of the sticker skin drag coefficient, additional weight, also eventually how the salt broke down the adhesive causing a giant rooster tail cloud of stickers to cover the salt flats.
I don't have a sticker, but you're an ok guy (I think)
I really enjoy the way you effortlessly do the most complicated things, before fubar'ing the most simple things on camera, just to keep us entertained.
For that bottom piece here is the strategy I would use:
You will be doing two layups. I know it is tempting to do one but two is going to help you get the shape you want with nice edges and a smooth, flat bottom.
Get some clean plastic sheeting that will release well, probably about 4x as much as you need to make one vacuum bag.
Step 1, put the bottom of your vacuum bag on the table.
Step 2, get some thin double side tape and tape your aluminum strips in place on top of the plastic.
Step 3, cut your fiberglass slightly oversize (probably +1.5" on all edges) in both length and width, however many layers you want, I suggest 3 or 4.
Step 4, get a piece of plastic about twice as wide as your table and a bit longer, this is where you are going to wet out your fiberglass.
Step 5, when you wet your first piece of fiberglass, use a grooved roller to work the epoxy in to the fiberglass and to work the bubbles out. Just work fast because you need to wet out and place all but one piece of fiberglass for this layup.
Step 6, lay each piece of wet fiberglass over the aluminum strips, one at a time and use a tool to work the fiberglass in to the corners so there is little to no empty corner area on the bottom.
Step 7, after the wet fiberglass is laid, put a peel ply and absorption ply on top, seal up the vacuum bag, pull a vacuum and let it cure.
Step 8, after removing the cured fiberglass from the table, trim the edges about 1/64" undersize,, sand the bottom (aluminum side) rough to remove any release agents and if there are gaps around the aluminum, mix up some epoxy and microspheres to fill those in and sand it flat after they cure.
Step 9, lay out another vacuum bag (maybe like a taco) on the table and another sheet for wetting your last piece of fiberglass.
Step 10, wet out your last piece of fiberglass, lay it on your vacuum bag and spread a thin layer of epoxy on the bottom side of the piece you trimmed earlier, then stick it on top of the wet fiberglass, fold the excess of the oversized piece up and over to wrap the cut edges. Add peel ply over the top and absorption ply over that. Make sure the edges are folded up nice and tight, then seal the vacuum bag, pull a vacuum and let cure.
When you pull that out it should not have anything really jagged to trim, the bottom.should be flat and there shouldn't be any voids. The vacuum bags should have kept your resin percentage low but wetting it out before laying it makes dry spots very unlikely.
On the other hand, weight isn't much of an issue so don't worry about slightly high resin ratios and add an extra ply if you are worried about strength.
After a few failed wet layups the group I was in figured out that wetting out pre-cut pieces of CF on a flat piece of plastic before placing them in the mold fixed almost all of our dry spot issues and was easier to do before the epoxy kicked because we could wet most of the pieces simultaneously and wet the rest while we were laying the first pieces in the mold. You might need more team to get thaose simultaneous processes working but it turned a scramble in to a much lower stress process.
You can modify those steps to do your other pieces but don't try to simplify them, that's as simple as we could get while producing good parts.
I’ve had similar issues with fiberglass, every single time I’ve done it. One big lesson I think I’ve finally learned is that no matter how well you think you scraped the sides of the mixing container, you missed some, and you will have a few sticky places that will never cure, ever. Mix the crap out of it then transfer it to a new container and mix it again, this gets rid of every single bit of pure resin and pure hardness. The other issue is whether it’s old, and whether or not it’s ever frozen, and 32°F isn’t necessarily freezing to some chemicals, get the resin from a real fiberglass place. All this “advice” from someone less talented than you, so grain of salt here.
yep. I worked at an auto parts store for a while and I can confirm, people return old oil all the time. (or atleast try to) I always checked to see if seals were opened, even if i returned something with an opened seal I would never let it get back onto the shelf.
Heck yeah. Best dollar I've ever spent. Glad you liked the Super Fast Washington.
Hopefully the sticker was cool too 😂
We were watching this episode and let me tell you how excited we were to see not only our sticker but also the letter. This Idea of yours is gold. Thank you.
Learning by doing. My favourite way of learning. Maybe not the best way of learning, but definitely my favourite.
It's 8:00 p.m. on a Sunday, and this video was the best part of my weekend so far. If I could pay some media giant to make more of this, they'd find some way to mess it up. I do understand making a video for a quarter million people might seem lonely, but I really appreciate Matt uploading this view into his natural process. I feel less lonely knowing there's somebody else who works this way
It’s honestly shocking that someone would return a used bottle of resin to the store lmao
Have you seen the price of one of these bottles?! 😂
I think everyone should have to work retail for a few months and food service for a few months before you're allowed to shop at a store or eat at a restaurant. I worked at Advance for a couple years in high school. It does not surprise me even a little bit that someone would try to return used motor oil in a bottle of resin. It does not even shock me that the auto parts store employees would fail to check it and would restock it to the shelf. It also does not surprise me that you might find an ancient, expired bottle of resin...some of the stuff on those shelves has been there a long time.
I might even do the same thing...if it was Walmart or HomeDepot...or Amazon. ok, no I wouldn't even with them, not this level of nasty.
But honestly Matt should have immediately recognized it was not right. And he could have used his epoxy and done the same thing. I've not heard of having to bake infusion epoxy, that seems very odd.
@@username34159265The O'Reilly's that I worked at had some stuff on the shelves that I'm pretty sure had been there since the store opened like 15 years ago
@@murraymadness4674 He immediately recognized it was not right, hints the cheap sheet, but proceeded to make content with it anyway.
You're nailing it, keep the great work!
Matt, one of the best narrators on TH-cam. Bravo!
As somebody who has worked at an O'Reilly's Auto parts, that is absolutely 100% something that somebody would do
Bro, the Thiccolas Cage sticker killed me 😂
What you need is some spiral tubing. It goes inside the bag, and creates a long section where the resin can continue flowing unrestricted because the tube doesn't fully crush like the fiberglass does. So you'd put the tube at the edge of the longest section, connect 1 or 2 ports to it (2 from opposite sides works great), and it'll allow the resin to get distributed through the entire part instead of from just your ports.
13:40 The circular woven filter worn by the person on the left, which I suspect is a P100, is not intended for the VOC fumes from the resin. The person on the right appears to be using the pink plastic respirator cartridges, which are correct.
A few decades ago, back when custom vans were the fashion, I built one with a full custom interior and ran out of budget before I could paint it. I had been collecting bumper stickers, and other sticky labels and such for years and decided to cover the van with them, starting at the back and working my way forward so they overlapped and wouldn't get peeled off at Warp Speed. A friend clear coated it once it was labeled, but before he did, we had to give the van a name. It was the fashion. A friend of his cut-out a reflective name in glitter, edged with a gold pin stripe. We called it "American Graffiti". It was perfect.
16:08 I like the red shift sticker, approaching so fast that light is compressing from your perspective.
It is not blue shift b/c the universe expands and there isn't much coming towards us besides Andromeda. Most of what we see is turning red in the sky.
I can’t wait to see how this car turns out and how it does in the salt flats. With luck I’ll be able to come out and check out this summer. Keep up the good work, man.
Very cool to see that my bribe made it into the video!
You can get cheap flat panels. Shower surrounds. Tonu covers and truck shells are great sources. I would suggest lysol for applying your aluminum. Mike
Shower tubs and camper shells are typically made of chopped fiberglass and are rather thick and heavy and rough. Really nasty stuff that I wouldn't try to use for anything, much less a racecar. They're also usually not flat.
You couldn’t have made a better advert for the pre-made fibreglass sheets you mentioned at the start. This seems to be your model.
But please don’t stop making these ads, it’s amazing 😁
Foreshadow Matt is back!
This is by far my favourite build on TH-cam
Best giggle on the internet!
I made some door cards for my mk1 escort 10 years back. I used a large piece of thick tempered glass as the base, and the final wet laid method you used.
I went the full hog and used West Systems 105 epoxy resin.
They honestly turned out glass smooth.😂
🇦🇺🤛🏼🤜🏼😎🍀☮️☮️☮️
On today's episode of Matt increases the project budget in efforts to decrease it😂😂
Isn't that every episode?
@@ThaJay yeah, that's why that's the name of the series
Basically the subtitle to his channel.
@@n00bist723 Lol missed the word "of"
I think I saw one of my stickers! Thanks Matt, glad my bribe (despite sending many stickers) was successful lol. Cheers, Zach from TX
I vibe so hard with this channel. I hope one of my stickers shows up on the racecar!
Having worked as an epoxy formulator for people making composites for the past decade, you really need to get an oven that's capable of heating the entire piece uniformly. You risk having a weak zone in the middle with your method.
I'm in a formula student team whose car is made of a carbon fiber monicoque, and more composites. The monocoque itself is made from preimpregnated carbon fiber that gets autoclaved into form.
For post-curing resin parts, we just have a Sauna. There's an ESP32 controlling the whole show in a control panel outside, with multiple choices of temperature probes: One somewhere in the air, or just stick one inside the part.
Last time I worked as an FG fab, it took 12 hours from removing the leftovers of the damaged part from the vehicle, fixing, painting and re-attaching the part back in. Within two days it was almost as bad as it was when I pulled it off. The inner structure I created from a scrap pile helped keeping the part together. I got paid a lunch and a bag of tobacco. Also, that was the last time I worked on that shop. Watching these videos and getting flashbacks from my working years, it is difficult to decide which one of us is crazier or less intelligent..
I can't tell you how many times I've opened a box of plug wires to find used ones in there. The wood grain is genius. I'm thinking K-Car/Minivan/Family Truckster woody theme.
my Ground News subscription changed my life: when i learned that all stories exist on a single dimension of left to right, and they determined what went where, i was liberated. it's an honor to pay them to think for me.
lol
As someone who spent years making flat GRP panels, it's been quite easy for me to see all the places you went wrong. This is a first for me in your videos, so for some reason, I'm relishing it! 🤣🤣 You'd never believe how easy it is to get wonderful panels that can be used for all sorts of shapes and mouldings. Like, super easy. 🙈
Adding to what joshua said about thermal runaway is the smaller the surface area in the container, the faster it will heat up. A wide and shallow vessel will stay cool longer and if it's shallow enough will never get hot. Resin doesn't dry, it cures so all that surface area doesn't make it set faster, but the heat will. Heat increases the speed of any chemical reaction.
I’d a sticker since ‘97, knew I’d find a place for it some day. I saw it in your opened pile. Cool.
My dad builds a lot of boat parts with fibreglass.
His method is like your last method but he then adds a plastic sheet and vacume seals the part, adding a ply wood sheet with weights if he wants the part to be smooth on both sides. He pulls a vacume on the part for a good day or two and then sands the sheet if needed.
yeah, this is the best way. Use glass with wax or 4x8 sheets of pvc.
And here I was with a basket full of vacuum infusion supplies for panel making. Love your videos Matt!
I love your content and sarcastic sense of humor. When my frustration starts to get the better of me I try to be more like you.
Foreshadow Matt was absolutely killing me.
Several years ago my buddy bought a Toyota (Hilux) pickup camper for the Gambler 500. While he was out of the shop i used this woodgrain vinyl I had sitting around and gave him some hood stripes. It looked surprisingly good and held up longer than the rest of the vehicle
They say you learn from your mistakes, but it seems we're all learning from Matt's mistakes. Thanks Matt.
I legitimately think that I learn more from watching unnecessarily complex shortcut attempts than from just watching a straight up tutorial. 😊
Perfect, love it! The internet is full of success stories, I like that you show the real rocky paths to them.
I forgot to tell you in some earlier comments on this series that epoxy is very sensitive to thermal runaway. Been there done that. But most of all it is very unhealthy. Just a quick warning about all chemicals, be careful with them, but especially when you play around with acetone, by itself its not too bad, but it will let any other substance through your skin (which is usually surprisingly protective) into your bloodstream. And acetone loves to chew through gloves :) Latex gloves are good, and rotate 2 pairs, fume them out. Use mineral spirits or specialty resin cleaners to keep your equipment clean.
I'm amazed at what you are doing with fiberglass, and thank you for the tenacity! In boat building school I did the XPS CNC milling for a plug that I laminated into a mold and into a boat, but in this episode you're doing something that I haven't done yet, fiberglass stock boards. My next goal is to try stitch and glue boat building with CNC cut fiberglass flat stock, no ply.
My next tip for you is to buy an aluminum de-airing roller ;) Now that you're warmed up with the flat stuff I'm sure you can easily pull of a 50/50 resin to fiberglass ratio, and push of any extra with the roller to lower the weight even more. Both poly- and vinyl-ester are great for laminating, in my experience vinyl spreads a bit better (your's looked like vinyl-ester).
Unless otherwise specified, use 1% hardener, you're not in a rush. Dunk the roller and any other tools into a metal can filled with resin cleaner when you have a break from laminating, cover the can with a lid. Another reason why to avoid acetone, it melts your tools.
Again, awesome stuff and awesome attitude, good luck! Oh and about the embedded aluminum, make some more fiberglass board strips (glue together the off-cuts), fill and round the sharp corners with... filler, and do the open open lamination surgery with the roller, presto.
So glad there were some AvE stickers in the pile "Do not dumb here - no dumb area" - brilliant. I like his "Danger - not only will this kill you, it will hurt the whole time you are dying". Chefs kiss.
Matt is the living form of the saying "Super easy, barely an inconvenience"*. 😂😁🤟
*Screen Rant: Movie Pitchs
I really enjoy watching these "Look at all the mistakes i made videos". Really makes you wonder how much we don't get to see.
I paused the video at the point where you showed all the stickers that will go on the car, and I loved the "shake hands with danger" one. Great stuff
AvE
Having helped with a few fiberglass & carbon model wing layups (3m or about 3 yards long), I can say we did successfully vacuum bag them (great finishes) but did NOT attempt to flow resin in. We layed up in mold halves, rolled on as much resin as we were comfortable with, put molds together and vacuum bagged it.
On that composite envisions infusion resin, you can let it room temp cure (but it takes about double the time and doesn’t have as high Tg). This is also what their support has said.
Alternatively, premium resin tech rdr 3410 and rhd 9386 99 (or the longer pot life hardener) is an amazing infusion resin, even if not listed as such.
“We set the buckets outside where they could think about what they had done” caught me so off guard I did a spit take hahahaha
Thank you for being here for us, and we'll keep being here for you.
Thank you for being you! I broke my wrist coming out of the shower at the gym and I've been frustrated and pissed at myself and in a lot of pain. Seeing the surgeon on monday! Your upload is a welcomed solace. Hope you have a kickass week!
I am by no means any sort of expert but I've worked with vacuum infusion a few times and have two pieces of advice (if I'm wrong about anything do tell me to, politely, fuck off)
1 - Leave extra "vacuum bag sheet" then add a sort of "dog ears" to the corners of the infusion, bending the sheet. Leaving extra bag for it to settle against the fibers helps prevent dry spots and possible breakages in the bag.
2 - For bigger pieces sequencially opening resin inlets works better than having multiple inlets open at the same time, at least from my experince
Hello Super Fat matt. The infusion mesh is directional, so make sure you are following that. The resin hot pots are not a result of mixing, Its purely do to the amount of resin you are mixing. Mix smaller amounts and it will cure slower. Another trick is to thin the resin with acetone and brush that over the peel ply to fully wet it out - not aerospace approved but works well to improve peel ply texture. Or just use non porous armalon.
YOU. ARE. A. LEGEND! Love your videos, kind sir!
As someone who has done a lot of vacuum infused fiberglass and carbon parts…. You need a flow medium on top of your peel-ply. Its basically a 3d mesh that allows for high resin transmission. Its part of the scrap, and makes pealing peal ply much harder… but it works. Cover 80% ish of the final part.
The runaway thermic reactions on your resin are to be expected when resin is in a bucket like that for to long. Mix a smaller starter amount and Keep topping up your bucket in small amounts at a time. the more resin is spread out and not centralized the slower it will go off.
Pig mats are the best! They make wonderful products. You keep saying " you don't know what you don't know" there is actually a name for this, the Dunning Krueger Effect.
Love the content thank you!
14:01 THERE'S MY STICKER MOM!!!
16:50 AND THERE'S MY LETTER!!
Matt, You should try using Solarez. It reacts with the sun. You could lay up your parts in the garage and then wheel it out into the sun and in 4 or 5 minutes it is cured. I've used it many many times to make molds, body panels and parts without waiting for hours to cure before laying up the next coat. Also if need be for a night job you can use hardener and it will act like normal resin with normal cure times. I've never tried it with bagging but you should have lots of time for the resin to flow. You can also use a UV light to cure it if need be or again at night if needed without adding hardener. It's been an enormous time saver for me over the years.
The sticker segment is hilarious, what a brave soul
With how this car is going, we're gonna have to start calling YOU Fiberglass Matt.
Seriously though, I've learned so much about what not to do with composite materials from this series. Thank you, Fiberglass Matt.
FRP Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic comes in 4'x8" and 5'x10' sheets. It's 1/8" thick and its most common use is sides and roofs for semi-trailers. Lowes and Home Depot sell the 4'x8' sheets.
Foam or balsa core would be a good idea for flat panels that big. Would also aid in embedding the aluminum.
Weight is not as important in a land speed car as it would be in a typical race car, and the "taco" is the lower bodywork, so if anything is going to be heavy, it should be this panel. I think steel (or more reasonably, aluminum) would be a more rational choice than foam-cored or balsa-cored composite.
@@brianb-p6586 I was thinking of rigidity. A thin sheet is more prone to flutter/flex/fail. But I think you're also right that something more puncture resistant should be used - at least around pilot. Maybe a couple layers of kevlar in the layup?
@@davidross5291 I agree that stiffness is needed. A metal sheet would probably need some internal ribs.
If they had a special Olympics for engineering, Matt would be a solid contender
Very special.....
Chromatic Coffee is wonderful. Great people, too!
This is one of the coolest TH-cam things I’ve ever seen done. Really cool way to include the weird community of nerdy car people lol
That resin switch-a-roo happen to me, but it was spark plugs. Great video matt.