turbocad's custom dual/quad headlight mod

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ok, took a bit of time to research vacuum pumps & all my options for building a vacuum setup for these. want to get something good. finaly settled on a pump for this & got a pretty good deal on one tonight on ebay I think, considering new this pump is ~$1,500 , should do the job well...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=360216734457&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

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this is a pretty kick ass pump, my mould building supplies & equiptment grows...

by the time I receive this I'm going to try to build a vacuum chamber for this & get all my valves, plumbing & gauges & stuff togeather...
 
Dang Turbo, your going way beyond anyones expectations. Im sure if you would have just said " man I cant do the stupid clears!" nobody would have said a thing. Everyone would still have taken the quads the way they are, with the orange reflectors or tinted ones.

Now since you have the pump, and all the other materials, I expect your going to have to make other molds...like your own custom mirror turn signals.....custom rear reflectors with an IS logo in them....lol....there's going to be something coming out eventually. I cant see you getting into all this and not producing something else.

Come-on.... your TurboCad.....what else are we going to see fabricated down the line now that you have the equipment??
 
man, quiting is the most direct route to failure. I don't believe in failure, don't even allow myself to consider that as an option in most cases, so for this to be true then quiting is just not an option either. if I quit then all the time & money invested so far is wasted, but if I keep going & finally suceed(which I will no matter what if I never quit) then it just becomes the cost of R&D... will it still be a big waste of time & money?, perhaps, but at least I wouldn't have failed at what I originally set out to do & I'd rather waste a lot of time & $$ than fail at something that I've made up my mind I am going to do... I don't like quiting & I don't like failing, if I did I would not suceed in many of the things I set out to do, some are just a lot more time & $$$ than originally planned... this one is proving to be a bit costly in both respects is all... there is no question that I would have made much more $$ & saved a lot of time if I just settled on the home depo looking clears, but, I just don't like them & think they look cheap. I wouldn't want them on my car & I wouldn't want them on anything that is representive of me, they'd be an embarrasment to me & kill my desire to even do these at all... anything worth doing is worth doing right, or at least to the best of my abilities, if I don't have the ability then I must get this ability to be sucessful, it's either that or fail

besides, I did say that if anyone was tired of waiting & just wanted there lights without the clears then speak up & I'll get them out to you, & not one person said yes, I want my lights as-is without the clears, so I'm guessing everyone does still want these at least:tongue:

will all this equiptment & experience lead towards me having the ability to do even more stuff that I was unable to do before? you know it :laugh: this is progress & learning & experience & developing skills & methods that I haven't had up until now, you may think I'm doing this for bert & doc & the others but I'm not, I'm doing this for me... them benifiting from it is just a side effect... yeah, maybe I am a sick puppy, but that's the only difference between can & can not... sucess & failure.... the fact that I personally don't even mind the ambers for myself is not even a factor here...
 
dude, I wish you had really worked for infiniti 4 years ago, and made your designs as stock items. nice work.
 
Pursuit for perfection. I really admire your attitude on working on stuff, not just for yourself and work. :tup:

Now days, not many people possess this kind of attitude. And I believe that your attitude makes your life and business successful. :.smile:
 
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nice pump, looks like the ones I worked on in the semiconductor industry before, very industrial (they make bigger ones too lol !)

failure is definitely not an option for you :tup: :tup: thats why your our reisdent butcher ! :))
 
I hope my last post didn't come off like I think that I can never fail at anything, far from the point I was trying to make. the point is to shoot way above & to not go in thinking it might work, or I'll try it & just see if I can get it to be ok... just go in expecting to get it right & keep trying till you do. if one thing doesn't work then try another, & another. you know it's possible & you know that when you do figure it out & get good results then you can use the new skills/tools/methods for other things too & it becomes an asset to your skill set. sometimes it may take a lot of trial & error to get something right. if you have errors & hit obsticals then give up & say you ca't do it then you will never be able to do it.

failure is not an option means that you don't accept errors or things not working out as a reason to say that you can't do it, all they would mean is that your not doing it right yet & you need to try something else, theres no reason you can't do it if you really want to & are willing to do what it takes to get it done, doesn't literally mean that I believe I can never fail at anything :tongue:

---------- Post added at 03:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:57 AM ----------

also on the pump I contacted the seller & questioned him about the pump & it should be in great shape & good working order, def a good strong industrial pump & enough to do some nice things with it, should be a great tool for years to come
 
hey turbo... i'm a dental student here in cali and we use vacuum pumps all the time to mix our cements when we pour models of our patients teeth to make sure we don't get any bubbles. we use the vacuum at 25psi. i feel like this is what you're looking for and need. i'm sure you can go to any dental lab and check out the machine they use. if anything, i can take a picture of the setup we use at school. kinda cool cause it has the mixer built in with a vibrator.
 
Vibe tables work well for bubble release in plasters, ceramics and mixed stone powders. More viscous materials (like resins) do not respond near as well to vibration.
 
yeah, & dental pumps same thing... there generally much smaller & less strong, not strong enough to create a full vacuum at 29"hg which is needed for a heavy viscosity material like this, but yeah, same theory & application for the most part...

oh, & merchant, I didn't think you ment anything less than a compliment, I just re-read what I wrote & it almost to seemed to read like I thought I was some kind of special person above the possibility of failure, which I of course am not at all, so I just wanted to clarify that :biggrin:
 
we also use acrylic resins like when we make dentures and stayplates etc... and one tip is, after you pour the acrylic, put it in a pressure pot(we use 24psi) with warm water and let it cure in that environment which helps prevent bubbles.
 
35ROK said:
we also use acrylic resins like when we make dentures and stayplates etc... and one tip is, after you pour the acrylic, put it in a pressure pot(we use 24psi) with warm water and let it cure in that environment which helps prevent bubbles.
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Its all in the processes to obtain a good pour :) best guess is that John will soon become a resin brew master.......
 
yeah, I've seen videos & stuff, trying to learn a lot. pouring from like 4' in a thin stream to avoid airation & stuff, folding over the mixture rather than stirring like crazy... I did the first one kinda careful & it just was still air bubbles like crazy though... it looked like one of those shake up snow globes, but the bubbles just stayed suspended & did't want to go anywhere...

lance, question... instead of injecting the molds can't I just build a vacuum setup to "suck" the resin into the molds too? I'm picturing 2 little tubes sealed to the vents & 2 little valves in these tubes, I can fill the fill point & make sure it holds enough resin to more than fill the molds so there will be no air introdution on the fill, almost like filling a funnel, then slowly apply vacuum to each void until it starts to come out the vent, I'd use clear tubing to see when it starts to come out, then close the valve & remove the tube, could this work? I don't see why it wouldn't but I don't see anything anywhere about vacuum filling, only injection molding? ....
 
just got a tracking # for the pump but it's not in the system yet, ground freight from cali, guess I'll have it here right after the new year? I'm going to try to build the chamber by the time the pump gets here so I can start the molding when it does get here, this will end eventually, it has too :laugh:

I promised myself that I wouldn't touch my engine swap until I finished these lights & sent them all out, but considering this latest delay in having to redo all the molding & casting while the lights are otherwise about done at this point I winded up having to break my promise to myself... it's almost january & if I don't dig into the engine swap now I'll never be back on the road for spring. at this point the engine swap time wouldn't affect he headlight time anyway, headlight timing now is all dependant on how fast I can get the lenses remolded & cast again...
 
this is the pot that I'm going to use as a vacuum chamber, it's aluminum, but it's over 5mm thick, I think it should work?. I went looking at stainless steel pots but like in macy's & there all pretty flimsy, the only ones that looked decent were part of $300 pot sets, got this from my wife. pump should be here monday, gona try & make a trip to homedepot & get the pumbing I need & I ordered a 1" plexi panel for the lid

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Lol happy new year bro!! Your wife will kill you if she find you stealing her cookware!!!
Love and admire your determination John.
 
turbocad6 said:
yeah, I've seen videos & stuff, trying to learn a lot. pouring from like 4' in a thin stream to avoid airation & stuff, folding over the mixture rather than stirring like crazy... I did the first one kinda careful & it just was still air bubbles like crazy though... it looked like one of those shake up snow globes, but the bubbles just stayed suspended & did't want to go anywhere...

lance, question... instead of injecting the molds can't I just build a vacuum setup to "suck" the resin into the molds too? I'm picturing 2 little tubes sealed to the vents & 2 little valves in these tubes, I can fill the fill point & make sure it holds enough resin to more than fill the molds so there will be no air introdution on the fill, almost like filling a funnel, then slowly apply vacuum to each void until it starts to come out the vent, I'd use clear tubing to see when it starts to come out, then close the valve & remove the tube, could this work? I don't see why it wouldn't but I don't see anything anywhere about vacuum filling, only injection molding? ....
Click to expand...

Sorry John, Thought I had responded to this, when I looked in on the on the thread to check your progress....anyway, [FONT=Verdana, Helvetica, Arial]I am not sure how well vacuum filling would work. I have never done it like that. The injection filling works pretty well and therefore there is no reason to change. I think the vacuum filling would be more complicated for this type of mold... it could possibly collapse the molds and make the parts come out warped.

The only vacuum we have used in RTV mold filling is to pull pesky air bubbles out through the vents. We do this by using the syringe that we filled the mold with to cover the vent and then pull back on the plunger. This sucks some urethane and hopefully the air bubble out. After that more urethane needs to be injected into the ingate to make sure that the burped vent doesn't pull a bubble back in. [/FONT]

BTW your anodized stock pot should be fine, if it collapses under pressure you will know that it's not going to work out and you hopefully slip it back into the kitchen unoticed:)
 
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