Timelapse: vacuum laminating segmented esk8 enclosure

jo guys, I havent been here quite a while now, too busy with cars & racetrack at the moment :grin:

nevertheless, Im still riding my vanguard daily and I recently helped out a colleague to build his own board - a 10s4p segmented battery loaded vanguard with ronins, old vesc and single motor: big suprise! :yum:

anyway, lots of prep went into this one to have all electronics fixated “ready to go” on the board, covered by a thin film and then we laminated just ontop with everything in place for the perfect rattlefree fit.

since i bought a gopro recently, i timelapsed it and thought: maybe its instructional enough to share with the guys! so here it is, 5min vacuum bagging! ill show a foto of the finished board in a few weeks :slight_smile:

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foto of the finished enclosure! :smiley:

damn, it only took 5mins for the sky to get dark. time really does fly.

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shhh! :innocent:

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Can I ask how these vacuum bags are called? I am looking desperately for such a bag for a little different project.

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there are several type of bags - i used to have large tubes with quite thick and rugged foil - these werent very flexible, so for more complicated shapes (basicslly any edge/corner), they didnt work so well. Im just using very flexible thin film now made for vacuum bagging (only got german sources for it - example here: https://shop1.r-g.de/en/art/390176 ), and taping it all around with sticky tape on a PE ground plate thats fairly stiff, but does bend to the camber profile of the board.

in the video we didnt do a good job at all with the sealing, spend like 5min with loads of extra sticky tape to find all the leaks :sweat_smile:

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@whitepony great to see you again, post some more of your awesome work

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a bit disappointed because pure glass didnt turn out translucent, its basically white i stead. was the first time I did glas only, no carbon, all for transparent electronics. ah well, colleague went off with it to sand down wrinkles and do all the little things that still need to be done.

overall it couldve been better, but also it couldve been a lot worse. the functionality is of course unaffected and top notch. guess we will add a layer of carbon later … or paint it in a nice color :slight_smile:

image image

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Great to have you back in the fold my friend. Your carbon spud is still one of my favourite builds.

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@whitepony is back!!! Now I can slowly steal all of your knowledge!!! Welcome back, hope that you aren’t just “one and done” and start blowing our minds with your work again!

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I’ve admired the stuff you’ve made here for quite some time, also thought much about why vacuuming components is not a thing, I guess it requires specific components hence really not marketable.

Love the glove fit and the ridge each cell makes, was it hard to release once cured?

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Thank you!

laminating just ontop of everything requires a full operational board with all electronics fixated in place - thats a more complicated and requires a lot more prep work than just hardfoam segments and fill with electronics later. also it tends to look worse from the outside, then again the functionality of a perfect fit enclosure is awesome and how often do you lateron check your boards underside?

no rattle, no rubbing and wear and tear, it will basically last forever with absolute minimum height.

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I think it looks neat, keep pushing the envelope

slap on a second coat of resin and you should be golden. I am pretty sure it is the peelply/release films texture that keeps it from being transparent.

Ideally you would grab some coating epoxy and or degassing the resin before rolling/brushing it on. A “coating resin” would help out in being UV resistant, self leveling and good at getting rid of the air bubbles and fully transparent ofc. also try to keep it in a dust free environment or cover it while the epoxy is hardening.

oh and be careful if you sand it before adding a layer of resin as it is super easy to damage the fibers underneath if you go to low on the grit size (you don’t need to sand it before adding another coat)

The laminating resin that you used might not have been fully transparent either which might be another factor. idk

looks sweet though, like all your other creations :v: