While alcohol will clean the surface of the aluminum so that your adhesive will stick initially, it doesn’t address the issue of aluminum oxidation. The surface of raw aluminum oxidizes over time and releases from the parent metal, and there goes your bond. Apply a conversion coating like Alodine to your raw aluminum pieces before gluing to them or powder coating them for greater adhesion longevity. Or better yet, have the pieces anodized. (You’ll need to grind off the anodic layer wherever you’ll be welding.)
I agree, cutting foam panels with the circular saw makes a huge mess. I try to plan ahead, and cut all my material on the same day. If you have access to one, a circular saw with a vacuum attachment will help a lot.
Interesting! I didn't have much luck with a vacuum on the circular saw... I'm willing to bet the design of my circular saw doesn't feed the chips very well into the vacuum attachment I was using.
Awesome! Just found your channel, I'd love you to do a video on why you didn't like the exoskeleton route... I'm thinking of going exo so it would be great to see all the issues you encountered, what you did and didn't like about it etc. 😁
One thing I also want to point out is that this isn't just for overland or expedition camping. I'm thinking of a pretty small modern stand up camper that would be used is modern campgrounds- but is small enough to store in a garage and pulled by a small SUV. Any camper build would benefit by this build method.
@17:20 adhesive activators can make a HUGE difference. They exist for a lot of different classes of adhesives. I'm particularly familiar with the kind that works with acrylic adhesives (like for tapes, for example 3M VHB). VHB tape on a cleaned and well prepped surface *with* activator is rock solid like you wouldn't believe. Might as well be welded on. The same activator works with everything from packing tape to foam gasketing, as long as the actual type of adhesive is acrylic based (one of the most common types). The waiting period is for the solvents to flash off. Some types of carrier solvents can actually inhibit the curing of polymers. This was a great video! You really shared a lot of useful knowledge.
@@PathNotTaken depends on the condition of the substrate, but usually yes. My preferred "sandpaper" is maroon 3M Scotch-Brite. You want to de-gloss, but you don't want deep valleys that you can get from actual sanding, because the adhesive film will never conform down into those troughs, so it's less than optimal strength and increases change of moisture permeating and freeze wedging. I have used both "3M 4298UV" as well as "Primer 94." They both have *very strong* fumes, so use with good ventilation and PPE. I prefer to use my own application swabs, and I never ever return the application swab back to the container for rewetting because you will 'drag-in' contaminants. If the area I'm prepping is larger than a single swab will do, I either use multiple swabs, or i pour some fluid out of the main container into a smaller one. I've gotten substrate ripping bonds on bare un-sealed MDF with this. I made a delivery/pickup box using VHB, angle aluminum, and expanded PVC board back in 2020 using the exact same construction method you've done here (but without the liquid adhesives) and it's so strong you can sit on it like a bench. Not a single fastener. Light, rigid, and free of corrosion.
You'll note the application notes for Primer 94 show its use for car wrap films, so that tells me immediately they use an acrylic adhesive. Not surprising, since the vast majority of pressure sensitive adhesives are acrylics. By contrast special high temp applications like kapton tape use silicone adhesives. This won't help with those.
Excellent video! I bought my panels and poultrusions from BoxxedCP out of Calgary Alberta. Shipped flat pack style for assembly in my garage! Just waiting on windows/doors from europre to arrive now. They did offer to assemble the box for me, which for time savings I probably should have paid for but whats the point of having a big shop hahah.
Killer build! I am looking to do a similar build with the same lift and tires from U joint. Can you tell me how high the roof of the cab is with the 37's and 6" lift? I will be doing a pop top as well and want to fit in the garage. Thanks so much, subbed and excited to see the next stages!
With the 37in KO2s and 6in Lift, the top of the cab is ~93in. Hard to get exact measurement due to the curvature of the cab but I think that should be pretty accurate. I estimate we're sitting about 1.0-2.5in above actual ride height (due to leafs not settled/oversprung for weight), but I sure wouldn't cut it that close! Hope this helps and thanks for watching!
@@PathNotTaken Thanks so much for taking the time to share! I can't understand why more people aren't using the e350 / 450 platform. Seems like a no brainer for overall length and a super discount as compared to truck. Can't wait to see your pop top ideas.
I was initially planning mitered corners, but ruled against it because the fitment was difficult and you ended up with a sharp easy to damage panel edge. Depending on the joint we would do a rabbet on one our both panels!
I was initially planning mitered corners, but ruled against it because the fitment was difficult and you ended up with a sharp easy to damage panel edge. Depending on the joint we would do a rabbet on one our both panels!
So there are no fasteners at all holding your box together, just glue ?? I'm thinking of building a small tow behind trailer and would like to attach anchor points to the inside walls for whatever. Would you drill thru the composite panel or do something else ??
Just glue! It really depends. What kind of things are you trying to anchor? You have a couple options. The simplest would be to just make a spreader plate out of metal that your anchor point is attached to (bolts, welded, etc) and then glue that on. That way you have more surface area. You could do the same thing but have the plates be on both sides of the panel, bolted together. The other more fancy option is some composite panel companies will allow you to put mounting point inside of the panel. Essentially during manufacturing of the panel, they route out a section of foam and put in a fiberglass/aluminum square tube. Inside of this square tube they then place a piece of steel flat bar that essentially becomes your nut. You can then drilling into your panel, into your tube, and tap the metal strapping. This creates a really strong anchor point. This will drive up the cost I’m sure. Hope this helps, thanks for watching!
@PathNotTaken ... My thoughts were for anchor points to tie things down inside of the trailer while moving down the road. I do a lot of off road trails overlanding so it would have to be subjected to twisting and flexing. Does that glue have that good of holding power when cured??
@ Yeah the glue is crazy strong. 435PSI tensile strength. ie if you made your anchor mounting plate 5x7in, that’s 5x7x435 or 15,000lb of bonding strength! Other things play into it like glue thickness, adhesion prep, etc
How do you make a door using the product. Using hinges and closure devices you seem to have to do hardware that goes through, or at least they did on my home.
We considered making a door but it gets complicated fast because you can’t have the edge of the panel exposed! You can purchase premade doors, windows, hatches you simply glue on from companies like Artic Tern. However, we found a source much cheaper and higher quality we plan to make a video on!
@@PathNotTaken Thanks, looking forward to that video. Need to replace a door on a 10 year old custom built toyhauler and it's hard to find anyone to do it.
The guys doing boxes in a day probably decades of experience doing industrial freezers same basic technology for like 50+ years. Tooling and experience go a long way. Think a beginner roofer vs a 5-10 ambitious pro.
Glue! We will probably make our cabinets out of 8020 extrusions and use the same glue to attach it to the wall. You could also use VHB tape. The glue has a tensile strength of ~435PSI, and VHB ~100PSI. If you imagine your average kitchen galley being 60inches wide x 22in deep x 36inched tall, that would roughly be 500 linear inches of 8020 bars that would be touching the floor/back wall, so glue on all of those bars would be 220,000lb holding strength for glue or 25% that for VHB, both plenty of strength and completely overkill!
You could also glue on pieces of aluminum “spreader plates” that are let’s say 1/2in thick 4x4 plates, and bolt your cabinetry to some of those. Same thing would apply for wood cabinetry except you could have even more bonding surface area. If you’re super fancy, you can even make your interior out of thinner composite panels!
@@PathNotTaken So the glue part of the structure isn't the part I'm concerned about- it's the wall. How much can the wall hold before delaminating from the foam? Thinking about that, though, it would be pretty high, too....
@ I’m not sure what epoxy the panels we used are held together with (or even what the failure point would be in the panel), but it’s probably in the neighborhood of 10x the strength of the flexible glue we use for assembly. I really don’t think you have to worry about this as long as your panels have a high quality core and you're spreading the load across the skin!
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While alcohol will clean the surface of the aluminum so that your adhesive will stick initially, it doesn’t address the issue of aluminum oxidation. The surface of raw aluminum oxidizes over time and releases from the parent metal, and there goes your bond. Apply a conversion coating like Alodine to your raw aluminum pieces before gluing to them or powder coating them for greater adhesion longevity. Or better yet, have the pieces anodized. (You’ll need to grind off the anodic layer wherever you’ll be welding.)
So generous of you to take the time to share your experience. Thank you!
I agree, cutting foam panels with the circular saw makes a huge mess.
I try to plan ahead, and cut all my material on the same day.
If you have access to one, a circular saw with a vacuum attachment will help a lot.
Interesting! I didn't have much luck with a vacuum on the circular saw... I'm willing to bet the design of my circular saw doesn't feed the chips very well into the vacuum attachment I was using.
I have use a Fein oscillating saw on fiberglass that worked pretty good and didn't grab much.
Now this is how you build a real expedition vehicle. No material can match the advantages of these composite panels!
Awesome! Just found your channel, I'd love you to do a video on why you didn't like the exoskeleton route... I'm thinking of going exo so it would be great to see all the issues you encountered, what you did and didn't like about it etc. 😁
One thing I also want to point out is that this isn't just for overland or expedition camping. I'm thinking of a pretty small modern stand up camper that would be used is modern campgrounds- but is small enough to store in a garage and pulled by a small SUV. Any camper build would benefit by this build method.
@17:20 adhesive activators can make a HUGE difference. They exist for a lot of different classes of adhesives. I'm particularly familiar with the kind that works with acrylic adhesives (like for tapes, for example 3M VHB). VHB tape on a cleaned and well prepped surface *with* activator is rock solid like you wouldn't believe. Might as well be welded on. The same activator works with everything from packing tape to foam gasketing, as long as the actual type of adhesive is acrylic based (one of the most common types). The waiting period is for the solvents to flash off. Some types of carrier solvents can actually inhibit the curing of polymers. This was a great video! You really shared a lot of useful knowledge.
Thanks for watching and the information on activators! What activator did you use for VHB? And did you bother with sanding the substrates?
@@PathNotTaken depends on the condition of the substrate, but usually yes. My preferred "sandpaper" is maroon 3M Scotch-Brite. You want to de-gloss, but you don't want deep valleys that you can get from actual sanding, because the adhesive film will never conform down into those troughs, so it's less than optimal strength and increases change of moisture permeating and freeze wedging. I have used both "3M 4298UV" as well as "Primer 94." They both have *very strong* fumes, so use with good ventilation and PPE. I prefer to use my own application swabs, and I never ever return the application swab back to the container for rewetting because you will 'drag-in' contaminants. If the area I'm prepping is larger than a single swab will do, I either use multiple swabs, or i pour some fluid out of the main container into a smaller one. I've gotten substrate ripping bonds on bare un-sealed MDF with this. I made a delivery/pickup box using VHB, angle aluminum, and expanded PVC board back in 2020 using the exact same construction method you've done here (but without the liquid adhesives) and it's so strong you can sit on it like a bench. Not a single fastener. Light, rigid, and free of corrosion.
You'll note the application notes for Primer 94 show its use for car wrap films, so that tells me immediately they use an acrylic adhesive. Not surprising, since the vast majority of pressure sensitive adhesives are acrylics. By contrast special high temp applications like kapton tape use silicone adhesives. This won't help with those.
Really good video, lots of information to get started with. Thank you!
Wow, thanks. I work on boats. Great information
Pretty cool build so far. I have a trailer that I want to build and your strategy would be great for that project. Thanks for sharing.
Excellent video! I bought my panels and poultrusions from BoxxedCP out of Calgary Alberta. Shipped flat pack style for assembly in my garage! Just waiting on windows/doors from europre to arrive now. They did offer to assemble the box for me, which for time savings I probably should have paid for but whats the point of having a big shop hahah.
Nice! best of luck with your build!
Lot's of great information here.
Great video! Thanks!
Good video thanks for sharing. God bless you and yours.
Killer build! I am looking to do a similar build with the same lift and tires from U joint. Can you tell me how high the roof of the cab is with the 37's and 6" lift? I will be doing a pop top as well and want to fit in the garage. Thanks so much, subbed and excited to see the next stages!
With the 37in KO2s and 6in Lift, the top of the cab is ~93in. Hard to get exact measurement due to the curvature of the cab but I think that should be pretty accurate. I estimate we're sitting about 1.0-2.5in above actual ride height (due to leafs not settled/oversprung for weight), but I sure wouldn't cut it that close! Hope this helps and thanks for watching!
@@PathNotTaken Thanks so much for taking the time to share! I can't understand why more people aren't using the e350 / 450 platform. Seems like a no brainer for overall length and a super discount as compared to truck. Can't wait to see your pop top ideas.
Thanks for sharing the tips.
Did you miter or rebate the edges of the panels?
I was initially planning mitered corners, but ruled against it because the fitment was difficult and you ended up with a sharp easy to damage panel edge.
Depending on the joint we would do a rabbet on one our both panels!
I was initially planning mitered corners, but ruled against it because the fitment was difficult and you ended up with a sharp easy to damage panel edge.
Depending on the joint we would do a rabbet on one our both panels!
How much did it cost?
Great info
can fibreglass be used instead of aluminum extrusions for bonding the box together? the aluminum would still be great to protect the corners
Defintely! I think there’s a few benefits to that too. But fiberglass extrusions are a bit harder to source in my experience.
Waiting to hear an R value and whether that's open or closed cell foam. Fire retardant?
So there are no fasteners at all holding your box together, just glue ??
I'm thinking of building a small tow behind trailer and would like to attach anchor points to the inside walls for whatever. Would you drill thru the composite panel or do something else ??
Just glue! It really depends. What kind of things are you trying to anchor? You have a couple options. The simplest would be to just make a spreader plate out of metal that your anchor point is attached to (bolts, welded, etc) and then glue that on. That way you have more surface area. You could do the same thing but have the plates be on both sides of the panel, bolted together.
The other more fancy option is some composite panel companies will allow you to put mounting point inside of the panel. Essentially during manufacturing of the panel, they route out a section of foam and put in a fiberglass/aluminum square tube. Inside of this square tube they then place a piece of steel flat bar that essentially becomes your nut. You can then drilling into your panel, into your tube, and tap the metal strapping. This creates a really strong anchor point. This will drive up the cost I’m sure. Hope this helps, thanks for watching!
@PathNotTaken ... My thoughts were for anchor points to tie things down inside of the trailer while moving down the road. I do a lot of off road trails overlanding so it would have to be subjected to twisting and flexing. Does that glue have that good of holding power when cured??
@ Yeah the glue is crazy strong. 435PSI tensile strength. ie if you made your anchor mounting plate 5x7in, that’s 5x7x435 or 15,000lb of bonding strength! Other things play into it like glue thickness, adhesion prep, etc
@PathNotTaken ... Ok, sounds good. I'm not trying to build some crazy trailer but I do want it to hold up to some abuse.
@7:17 it's the laugh behind the camera that really says "yea that was a huge pain in the ass"
Epoxy for fixing delam - Any kind of epoxy?
I would love to be able to build things out of these composite panels, but nobody will sell them to you unless you’re a contractor
How do you make a door using the product. Using hinges and closure devices you seem to have to do hardware that goes through, or at least they did on my home.
Doors and hatches. I'm curious about that too.
We considered making a door but it gets complicated fast because you can’t have the edge of the panel exposed! You can purchase premade doors, windows, hatches you simply glue on from companies like Artic Tern. However, we found a source much cheaper and higher quality we plan to make a video on!
@@PathNotTakenlooking forward to that video!!
@@PathNotTaken When will this video be posted?
@@PathNotTaken Thanks, looking forward to that video. Need to replace a door on a 10 year old custom built toyhauler and it's hard to find anyone to do it.
Why aluminum? Pull-truded high strength fiberglass would have less thermal expansion differences to the panels.
And wondering how a flat panel box truck loses mpg compared to an aerodynamic curved B van.
Use Basalt Fibre never Fibre glass, why Basalt Fibre is 5 x stronger than steel. Built trucks for the Dakar..😂 They never came apart..
The guys doing boxes in a day probably decades of experience doing industrial freezers same basic technology for like 50+ years. Tooling and experience go a long way. Think a beginner roofer vs a 5-10 ambitious pro.
Absolutely! Experience plus a system that is all ready to go and fits together like legos.
what is "VHP tap"?
VHB Tape High strength double sided tape from 3M. I linked some in the description!
Also, how did you attach cabinets to the composite? That's one thing that makes me pause when considering a composite panel to build a camper out of.
Glue! We will probably make our cabinets out of 8020 extrusions and use the same glue to attach it to the wall. You could also use VHB tape.
The glue has a tensile strength of ~435PSI, and VHB ~100PSI. If you imagine your average kitchen galley being 60inches wide x 22in deep x 36inched tall, that would roughly be 500 linear inches of 8020 bars that would be touching the floor/back wall, so glue on all of those bars would be 220,000lb holding strength for glue or 25% that for VHB, both plenty of strength and completely overkill!
You could also glue on pieces of aluminum “spreader plates” that are let’s say 1/2in thick 4x4 plates, and bolt your cabinetry to some of those.
Same thing would apply for wood cabinetry except you could have even more bonding surface area. If you’re super fancy, you can even make your interior out of thinner composite panels!
@@PathNotTaken So the glue part of the structure isn't the part I'm concerned about- it's the wall. How much can the wall hold before delaminating from the foam? Thinking about that, though, it would be pretty high, too....
@ I’m not sure what epoxy the panels we used are held together with (or even what the failure point would be in the panel), but it’s probably in the neighborhood of 10x the strength of the flexible glue we use for assembly. I really don’t think you have to worry about this as long as your panels have a high quality core and you're spreading the load across the skin!
@@PathNotTaken I guess you could do the same with wood strips, so a cabinet could be screwed into that. That would make it really easy to make.
Language was a turn off watching
Waaa waaa, go find the kids area of youtube karen ... ffs.