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Custom Carbon Fibre Juliets - my homage to this wonderful design

molding process
Sigh .... embarrassingly, life and family got the better of me last year and I had so many other things competing for my time, kids growing up, exams, colleges etc and I can only apologise to anyone who read with interest my original postings :(

I did get on with making a load of moulds, getting better at laying in the fibres etc etc, oh and in terms of looking to get some company to do this, it's very labour intensive and very difficult to speed up.

I tried using a vacuum to reduce the chance of voids in the fine mould channels, but that does not work, the problem being that it is a complete 3D mould encapsulated on both sides rather than a 3D one which is open on one side so that you can using breather cloth and release film.

I tried using a vacuum process where you draw in the resin on dry fibre which are laid in the moulds, but you still get loads of voids and the fibres can be moved during the draw, so that didn't work.

The bottom line is that it's all heavily hand crafted, but it does work and I have knocked out quite a few pairs of the Juliets, lots of parts etc.

One thing that has slowed me down is that I am trying to find better fixings, ultra small, properly manufactured screws that are two part, often called inter-screws. These need to be super small, perfectly machined so that I can use them to lock the arms to the frame, rather than using ultra small self tappers. I should have sorted this out some time ago, but it's just been sat on the back burner for a while :rolleyes:

I have also made progress on the Romeo's, something that I always wanted to do. I have managed to make a whole series of moulds and also the positives to make more moulds (something that I had been meaning to do for ages), which means that when I use a mould, after a while they start to deteriorate, so I can then create new moulds without needing to take apart the original frames to create new moulds, I can do this from the positive masters instead :)

I then went on to make some trial Romeo's and as you can see here, I have been perfecting the parts process, so each part is an exact replica of the original Romeo part.

romeo1.jpg


The Romeo's are trickier to do (oh no not again!!) and both the eye frame and the bridge are far more fiddly to create as I need to make sure that the fibres all flow the right way to a) give a good visual look and b) make sure that they are strong enough.

I have been playing with different fibre flows to get different visual looks whilst testing for strength.

If you look at the above photo, on the left hand side, you'll see the 4 eye frames, the bottom left one has a twin line flow (ie, the bottom of the frame flows into the bottom of the arm bracket and the top of the frame flows into the top of the bracket) whilst if you look at the second one down from the top on the left hadn't side, you will see that the eye frame flows around from the top to the bottom in one continuous curve.

Personally, I prefer the style which is on the bottom left, the two line flow which you can see below.

The bridge is also more fiddly to create as it's complicated the way that the lines appear and making sure that the strength is there for the eye frame to lock into.

romeo2.jpg


I tried two ways of placing the fibres and two styles, one being the plain weave approach:

View attachment 576060


And the other being the braided, flowing line approach:

View attachment 576058

The arms are similar to do as the Juliet's, and they look great and they are pretty strong:

View attachment 576059


Sorry about the bad photo's, but these are all prototypes to see if I could do the Romeo's justice and so far they are looking pretty good.

Once I track down some decent fixings, I can put them together properly and finish a pair of properly, lacquer and polish them up and then I can show you all how they look, but for now, sorry but they are these scrappy photos of the prototypes.

So, sorry for taking sooooooooooooo long to get back to anyone who is interested :oops: I am starting to get some clear time for these now, which is good and I will be getting back on these properly, cos the missus told me too :D, but also because I think that they look great :D:D

I haven't forgotten these honestly I haven't, and I will look to keep anyone who is interested more up to date with progress rather than looking like I have fallen off the face of the earth :rolleyes: ahem !!
I would love to see some of your molds and how you lay the carbon fiber, I've been wanting to do a project just like this for a good while, the hardest part is definitely getting the lens grooves cut since you cant really replicate them through the molding process
 
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