Thread: Vaccum Presses and Cloudmaker

Jason,
Mick Bates [email protected] has taken on the company the web site is on the blink but you can email him.

Mike

Thanks Mike, will send him an email. If I can obtain a cattle dog of products off him would anybody be interested in perusing his products??? Might be able to send interested parties a PM or email.

Will let you know how I went.

I've got the large press kit n venturi............would love to get my hands on a decent pump
definitely interested here

aah indeed interested here as well

Bulldog

In a previous life I owned a photographic studio and vacuum mounted posters before framing them.

My setup was a sheet of plastic I bought from a plastics supplier and then welded up by a local company who did PVC welding. For a vacuum pump I connected a hose on to the inlet to my compressor. This system worked for several years without any problems.

The cost of the plastic and welding was just over 60 bucks. I have considered using a compressor from a fridge as the vac pump and would expect it to work quite well.

woodcutta

What a good idea did you hold the vacuum and turn off comp or just leave it running until glue dries? My problem is 12hr drying time.

I used yellow glue/ water at about 60/40 ratio. This dried in about 30 minutes and the compressor ran all the time.

When I started my apprenticeship I worked with a refrigeration mechanic and he used an old fridge compressor to vac out the systems before gassing. He would leave the pump running for 24 hours before regassing which gave me the idea it should be OK for extended periods.


Woodcutta

Hi all,

I use a vac pump to make scale model parts for warships. To purchase a commercial pump for 2.5k was out of the question.

I needed to evacuate a cubic metre of air in seconds - and keep it out for half an hour for the epoxy resin to go off.

Apart from some second-hand guages the system is a freebie, scrounged from the skip.

Basically the pump is from an old refrigerator, but instead of going directly to the bag, I suck out all the air from inside one of those large black oxy bottles used for gas welding. Because the pump is so small it will take 24 hours to reach the 15 (?) mercury inches that I require.

The two way valve is shut off and the bottle is ready to connect to the vac bag when required.

When all the parts are assembled in the bag, the bag has most of the air 'pushed' out by hand and then the bag sealed, it is ready to hook up and get the remaining air out. It helps to have a barrier mat at the bottom where the hose goes into the bag so that any air pockets do not get trapped in any overlap of the plastic bag and bleed across to an area surrounding a moulded part.

Open up the two way valve and WHOOSH! - all the air is sucked out of the vac bag in under 3 seconds. I leave the bottle connected until the resin has started to cure then shut off the bottle.

I then start up the fridge vac pump to the bottle again to extract the air that has been expelled from the bag. 20-30 mins max and she is ready for the next job.

If schematics or pics are of any use to you, give me a pm.

regards,

Art

Guys,

As I posted earlier I have emailed Mick and I now have the cloudmaker cattledog so if anybody is interested PM me your email addee and I will forward a copy onto you.