Exxxxcccellent. I will have some beers for you too.
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Ooooohhh
Finish is pretty decent. Too thin on edges and cracked when I popped it out I think. Will reinforce with additional layers and tidy it up.
Lessons:
It’s way too much work to try and lay it up to a final thickness in one go. Need to do it over 2 or 3 stages.
Had to rush to get bit in the vac bag before epoxy cured, so the layup got messy. Expect inner side will be rough.
Elastibag 1000 rules.
Pva plus hairspray release (Cos I was nervous about it sticking) went well. Try pva by itself next time.
Fumed silica pigmented tack coat looks pretty solid as a finish
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Looks awesome! Well done dude!
Cheers bro, well it’s been a process and the part is certainly less than ideal. Making some repairs so it has a bit of strength and I’ll cut it out.
Had a few thin spots and also some thick areas where it needed grinding and sanding so it’d still fit cells in the best layout. I then sanded all way through one area with the Dremel 
Can’t be fucked fixing exterior cracks and gelcoat which chipped off. Chalk that up to patina and learning.
Will make another, after I have finished this up a bit more. Definitely keen to have another crack and test out some more methods to see if I can get a better finish and strength.
Maybe I should buy a catch pot and try resin infusion… 
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You don’t necessarily need a catch pot for infusion… just clamp the line before fully saturated. That’s how i plan on doing it anyway…
What about resin exit?
Just a long exit line? And clamp that?
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Never considered it because have always had a mission getting a good seal but this elastibag shit is ridiculous. $30/lm but super stretchy and 500gsm so doesn’t feel like it will puncture easily. So good 
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Ideally you don’t really want much resin exiting. From videos I have seen, you wait until the resin has nearly reached the vacuum line and you clamp the intake and outtake.
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You have just convinced me bro. If I don’t need to buy more shit, I’m into it
(Edit - maybe… ). Need a perfect seal tho. All of my experiences tell me that is tough to achieve. Catch pot allows pump to cycle on and replenish vacuum if it gets low without fucking your pump.
.
Got spiral tubing and spacers already.
Maybe different resin?
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I bought vinylester infusion resin. Much lower viscosity than epoxy. You could always add a ‘backup’ line further away from the main vacuum in the situation that you might need an extra suck 
just spitballing
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might just make a ghetto catch pot with some thick wall pvc drain pipe and some end caps.
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I like it. I might do the same. You do it first so i can learn from your mistakes
Haha.
Have a drain pipe chamber on my vac pump which has been fine.
Not that cheap but less than catch pots, even from AliExpress. Buy a 1m length and when it’s full, replace it 
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Lol, i like it. How do you connect the tubing to it? Proper fittings or just tacky tape?
I used threaded barb fittings and tapped a hole in the pipe. Flash.
The butyl tape is bloody good tho.
I’d almost just use that and make sure you have a bit of extra pipe running so you don’t accidentally pull it out. Leave a loop and tape it to the pipe or something.
I have a tap now and maybe a couple fitting left. If not, I’m using butyl tape.
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Are u getting a control valve for your pump?
I’d reccomend one. $45usd. Plumb it to your pump setup and it senses the vacuum level system and has a relay to switch the pump on and off to hold that vacuum level. Has an adjustment screw. About 3-4 in mercury deadband.
Saves pump running all the time.
Think my pump only really happy up to about 50% duty cycle. Gets hot otherwise
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My 2cent spitball
What about adding a number of lines in different spots to gradually pull the vacuum and ensure pressure all around is perfect?
Got a link?
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