Daybreak Layup Materials (and some material related takeaways)

Owned by Advait Joshi
Sep 02, 2024
3 min read

This document will provide a list materials and resins and mold release agents used in each layup that occurred in the 2022-2024 build cycle. For a high level overview of the layup process, read this article. For more detailed information, read Aeroshell Documentation: Daybreak and Aeroshell Wet Layups for Dummies.

 

For the 2022-2024 year we made negative fiberglass molds from positive expanded polystyrene molds. We subsequently made our carbon fiber parts in said fiberglass mold, as to have a better surface finish on our CF parts. Overall we had 5 major layups total, fiberglass top shell, fiberglass bottom shell, canopy, carbon fiber top shell, and carbon fiber bottom shell.

 

  1. Fiber Glass Top Shell

    1. X ply fiberglass

    2. X core used in small sections to help prevent warping and provide structural stability *Note this part still warped significantly as it was not used or worked on for about a semester and a half

    3. Kaneka Resin System, GR6840 with DR5 Hardener

      1. TDS

    4. PVA and Partall Paste 2

  2. Fiber Glass Bottom Shell

    1. 5 ply fiberglass

    2. X core used in small sections to provide structural stability

    3. Kaneka Resin System, GR6840 with DR5 Hardener

      1. TDS

    4. PVA and Partall Paste 2

    5. This layup had a relatively sizable delamination, the cause of which is unknown, but it seemed the resin wasn’t completely cured in patches

  3. Canopy

    1. X ply carbon fiber

    2. 2 ply kevlar

    3. 2 ply Fiberglass (Only in the middle, no other fabric was there as to allow radio waves to pass through)

    4. West Systems 105 with West Systems 209 Hardener

      1. TDS

    5. Frekote

      1. Frekote didn’t end up working for us in this layup as our fiberglass mold for the canopy had a lot of pinholes, and it may also not have been applied correctly

  4. Carbon Fiber Top Shell

    1. 4 ply carbon fiber

    2. 1/2 inch thick gurit foam core

      1. Would not recommend for the future, it was very painful to shape and is very heavy, there are better cores out there, I think we just got this one for free

      2. Was sandwiched between the CF but we had some delamination due to improper mold design, in the future make sure you have enough height that your CF can bond to itself properly

    3. West Systems 105 with West Systems 209 Hardener

      1. TDS

    4. PVA and Partall Paste 2

      1. This system actually worked decently for once but the pva got stuck to the CF part and it took ages for us to remove it

  5. Carbon Fiber Bottom Shell

    1. 5 ply carbon fiber

      1. 1 extra ply running down the center for extra strength so technically 6 ply total but only 5 complete ply

      2. This is an excessive amount of carbon fiber and this much shouldn’t be needed in the future, it was also flexible

    2. Liquid Glass Deep Pour Epoxy

      1. TDS (Not rly, I can’t find one but I’m sure you can)

      2. Do NOT use this epoxy in the future

        1. We chose this because it is supposed to have a 24 hour cure time, however it is a casting resin, and not a laminating resin, and hence is much weaker epoxy than West Systems or other lamination resins. On top of that, it can be warped by the heat of the sun.

    3. PVA and Partall Paste 2

      1. This layup it also released from the mold after a bit (it wasn’t seamless at all though), and we still had PVA stuck to the mold for a while

      2. Our mold was also concave so we had to force the mold open to get the part out, and the part was 5 ply fiberglass so… yeah

        1. If you only remember 1 thing from this article, remember not to make this mistake, its a pain to deal with.

 

We also had bulkheads running across the length and width of the car made to provide extra support and these were made of 4 ply carbon fiber (or a mix of carbon fiber and fiberglass) and nomex honeycomb (it was a sandwich panel so 2 ply, core, 2 ply). For this we used West Systems 105/209, with frekote as we were doing our layups on a metal sheet as it was a flat layup.

  • Our bulkheads were wetlayuped onto the shell, using West Systems 105/209

    • Do NOT do this again, lamination epoxy is not made for the stresses that our bulkheads were put under and because of that our attachment was weak at best (also we did the layups at 6 am and forgot mold prep so thats that)

    • Look at Composites Research for info on which epoxy to use for non-lamination carbon fiber to carbon fiber bonds

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