Tuesday, September 14, 2010

The Shrink Tape Experiment


I was impatient and wanting to test the oven curing process. Instead of carefully setting up a vacuum bag around the test joint I decided to see how the shrink tape would conform to a tube intersection when it was heated. I can say that on round straight sections of tube it works very well. On curved tube joints it conforms not at all leaving large wrinkles, pockets of epoxy, uncompressed fibers and generally a nice mess.

After a little sanding (and only showing the least embarrassing angle) the first wrapping test looked like this...


[Trust me, the underside is not so pretty]

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