Re: Epoxy granite or mineral casting
Quote:
Originally Posted by
mike mcdermid
Ok an update
DO IT IT IS EASY
if you want to read through 400 pages of guessing suggesting and theorizing go follow the cnc zone "experts"
I recently visited 2 companies who manufacture epoxy granite machine bases and actually are "experts" One manufactures CMMs the other very LARGE gantry mills made from Carbon fibre basically it is rocks in resin the guys gave me the full tech spec right down to the epoxy resin system which comes from HUNTSMAN ,nothing fancy rare special about it ,the rocks are quartz ,as guessed scaled to fit the section that is to be filled nothing fancy no fillers of spheroidal this that or the other ,just different sized grains and some fibres
there is nothing clever about it fill a mould and vibrate it
no flaming off with torches to burst bubbles etc analyzing sizes to the nth degree the applications engineer even pointed out how complicated lots of folks think this is ,cost to cast a machine 1000 a ton which was still cheaper than cast iron for a hobby sized machine your talking 100 quid
Mike this is something I have been thinking about having a go at now for quite a while but not had the time to chase down the final ratio of the mixture. If you can help with your experience and suppliers of the best resin to use etc I for one would be most grateful.
Thanks
Andy
Re: Epoxy granite or mineral casting
Quote:
Originally Posted by
audioandy
Mike this is something I have been thinking about having a go at now for quite a while but not had the time to chase down the final ratio of the mixture. If you can help with your experience and suppliers of the best resin to use etc I for one would be most grateful.
Thanks
Andy
Me too.!! . . . Yes please Sir.!! . . . (Would also mean Andy and I could play in the slap dab together. . lol)
Re: Epoxy granite or mineral casting
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peter.
I love it when practical experience makes a mockery of the theorists :glee:
It's a case of different objectives - I think what the 'theorists' are mainly discussing is a more demanding application than what mike has found out about.
I think the difference is that in the long thread on CNCzone they are (or were) trying to find a resin/aggregate mixture that would when set leave a surface smooth, accurate and stable enough to mount the linear rails directly to it, hence the suggestion of using a flame to remove bubbles. However if you're just making a base or frame with it and embed steel strips, or other means, to mount the rails, that can subsequently be machined or adjusted to obtain the required accuracy then you can get away with all sorts of things. There are quite a few examples of where people have not used fancy resin etc on their machine and got good results, such as this one.
Re: Epoxy granite or mineral casting
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jonathan
It's a case of different objectives - I think what the 'theorists' are mainly discussing is a more demanding application than what mike has found out about.
C'mon Don't get much more demanding or accurate than CMM's thou does it.?. . . . Most of that thread is over complicated Bullshit.
Re: Epoxy granite or mineral casting
I could have brought home half a dozen bags of fast-setting concrete from site last night that would do a pretty good job. I don't know what it's proper name is but the track workers call it 'Boff' - it comes in small bags of about 15kg, mixes directly with water, pours, doesn't shrink and crack and you can run trains on it within an hour of pouring. Very fine aggregate in it but by God is it tough, I dread having to break it - even with the demo robot it's hard going.
Re: Epoxy granite or mineral casting
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peter.
I could have brought home half a dozen bags of fast-setting concrete from site last night that would do a pretty good job. . . . .
Does that mean NR will need to keep that firmly under lock and key henceforth? :adoration:
Re: Epoxy granite or mineral casting
Dunno what you mean...
Actually, the stuff does shrink somewhathaving thought about it as I have seen cracks in large pours - no getting away from it when it's mixed so as to be pourable I guessbut I bet if you mixed it dry enough it would be reduced to a minimum. If you cast it into a steel form why would it not be good enough to fix rails to it directly?
Re: Epoxy granite or mineral casting
I've been catching up on things with the forum and found this thread to be very interesting. Many years ago i worked in the flooring industry. The type of flooring our company did a lot of was expoxy resin coatings and floors. We used to do a lot of sculptured floors which had to handle high loads.
Granite was used as a high density filler for the hi loads. Silica sand was used for general use and mixing both together gave a happy medium for general use. Do'nt ask me for quantities as i can not remember but a company we did use was Flowcrete. We could order the stuff with fixed curing times.
Looking at the other thread in that link with the French build, i would have considered concreate with the thicknesses he was pouring. The advantage of epoxy resin is that you can get away with thinner sections (reinforce with mesh).
Things to think of are:
All fillers must be dry
Pea shingle makes an excelent cheap filler (wash and dry it before use)
Silica sand (paving gap filler from wickes)
This stuff shrinks
Always use mechanical mixing
Pouring too thick in one go is bad (add mesh to key pieces together), do it in a couple of pours before removing from the mould.
This stuff gets very hot so pour into moulds outside to avoid the nastys
Clean all items with thinners that are being sed within moulds
we worked to a max of 60mm for screeds in one go
if you use a release agent in the mould then you could use a gel coat to give you nice surface to paint afterwards.
Hope this helps
Re: Epoxy granite or mineral casting
I've done some composite work and make the odd flight case for people using sheets of a carbon/kevlar/glass mix - the easiest way I have found of getting a glassy smooth finish is to use vacuum infusion onto a rigid sheet of perspex "mould" on a flat surface - you get glassy smooth finish with no bubbles.
Not sure, but you might be able to pull a thin infusion type resin through large sized grains of "rock" of some kind mixed with chopped fibres (I keep all my carbon/kevlar/glass off cuts for this purpose). If you can't vacuum through the aggregate, then pouring into a box mould with a perspex bottom should achieve good results. All the bubbles and crappy surface will be on the top and the shiny flat surface on the bottom, which you can then demould and flip over.
Heat would be my only concern, as large volumes which don't have a matrix of some kind tend to go off with cracks in them, but a few sheets of glass or carbon layered in the mixture should help solve that.
(Eyes up the gallon container of resin on the other side of the cave ;-) ).
Edit - nearly forgot - this link might hel with ratios http://www.talkcomposites.com/11/Res...ge-calculation
Re: Epoxy granite or mineral casting
Strangley the chap Xavier mentioned this relies more closely on the principles of precasting concrete than my field of expertise which is composites and as such its just a different binder which is low enough not to exotherm with slow ARADUR hardner
Will drop the details to you guys wanting to have a play on wednesday when i'm back at work even for us in industry its a damn sit cheaper than having a machine bed fabbed they are sending me some bags 5 of quartz for trials and the Resin we already have ,and its easily obtainable
the only thing that need to be scaled down is the vibrating table