rubber to metal bonding companies
hi guys
i'm looking for a company which can bond rubber to some ali wheels ive made, like Dave Moulds has done for 540. I have asked the people he used but their price was too high
i've looked around and contacted a few others but still high prices
does anyone know of any places i could try?
cheers alex
Re: rubber to metal bonding companies
You could try doing it your self.
I know some builders that made their own and achieved good results, specially Nick, from Australia, Scissorhands builder. There are loads of information on his forum topic: http://www.robowars.org/forum/viewto...asc&start=2460, beware the topic is huge and information about wheel casting is mixed with lots of other stuff.
Nick is a very accessible person, so if you need just drop him some lines on the Australian forum.
I intend doing something similar for some of my designs. The price is better if you intend doing lots of wheels.
Just buy PU (Polyurethane) resin and the appropriate hardener, make some molds and start batching ;)
Cheers,
Eduardo
Re: rubber to metal bonding companies
I thought the price that dave got was reasonable bearing in mind that it's a custom job.
Re: rubber to metal bonding companies
But Alex is a fully fledged fresher now, and as such, every penny saved is a penny towards booze :wink:
Re: rubber to metal bonding companies
hahaha very true Jamie
Yeh the price per wheel Dave got was good but you only get that price with 6+ wheels i only have 2 because of which the price shoots to £85 :x
so i'm still on the bargain hunt
cheers all for posts
Re: rubber to metal bonding companies
The Nipper guys bought the stuff and made the last set themselves, but you need to make the moulds yourself. Think they said they got it from RS but that could be wrong :P
Re: rubber to metal bonding companies
cheers alan
gonna look into some of the diy stuff :)
Re: rubber to metal bonding companies
Your best bet is to talk to Jeroen.
He showed me some polyurathane you can buy off RS for quite cheap, Then you'd just need to make your self a mould to put the wheel in central and pour the rubber around.
Joroen showed me a picture of the wheels John reid has made, He just made the moulds out of some wood and cut a hole in the middle with a hole saw. Simple enough to do, but can be messy.
Re: rubber to metal bonding companies
Just thought I would add a link. I bought some polyurethane to make some antweight mecanum wheels from here about a week ago:
http://www.mbfg.co.uk/category-143/3800.html
It worked out cheaper than ebay for me. Does anyone have the link the stuff from RS I would be interested to see what they have, I couldn't find it with a quick search.
Re: rubber to metal bonding companies
The rubber i used from RS is Devcon Flexane 60. And the primer is Devcon FL-10.
http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/sear ... &R=0692845
http://uk.rs-online.com/web/search/sear ... &R=0692895
In the link below I have some pictures of the wheels I made. I used gypsum but it was tough tp remove it from the rubber. Maybe spraying some sillicon rubber on the gypsum would have helped. The blue mold is sillicon rubber but it cured too fast to make 5 negative moulds at the same time. That was a waste of money and the gypsum was a cheap alternative afterwards :) After removing it from the gypsum i grinded them on a lathe to make the wheels smooth, round and concentric with the bearings.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Jeroenvdlo/Firestarter1#
I hope I will have permission from John Reid to post 2 of his pictures in the link below.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Jeroenvdlo/JohnSWheels#
He used wood and sillicon spray and it seemed to work well. I am still curious how long the wheels lasted in combat.