Fiberglass building insulation.

[HCB66]

Anyone every do any experiments with fiberglass building insulation? I'm wondering if you could get it to soak up resin it might be good for forming 3 D shapes.

 

[ondarvr]

Not sure what your goal is, but the glass ratio would be so low it be about like working with just resin.

This is assuming you wanted retain the normal loft of the insulation.

 

[HCB66]

Not sure what your goal is, but the glass ratio would be so low it be about like working with just resin.

This is assuming you wanted retain the normal loft of the insulation.

I don't really have a goal just curious about it. It's plentiful , can often be found for free in trash piles and it is fiberglass. I suppose you could also press it down like a fiber glass cloth.

 

[Will Gilmore]

No experimentation, plenty of (more than I could ever want) of installation.

I wonder about it's use in place of chopped cloth to build up a patch. Mat glass has a coating that makes it poor to use with epoxy, perhaps pink insulation doesn't have that issue. It is an interesting question and might just work fine. I don't know.

I just hate getting the stuff on my skin.

-Will

 

[Mr Efficiency]

It isn't quite as insubstantial as "fairy floss" ( I believe known as "cotton candy" in the USA), but is heading in that direction. It is almost all air. Whether it could be milled down to make a reinforcement for fillers, I don't know. But it is really not designed to have strength, just to be an inert material that maintains shape and uses the trapped air for insulation purposes.

 

[ondarvr]

FG insulation is treated with coatings for other requirements.

Typical CSM works well enough with epoxy, and most is compatible.

 

[Mr Efficiency]

Yes, I was thinking it would have various treatments applied, that might conflict with resins. Certainly scrap material may have its uses, but as a lamination material, seems a stretch.

 

[Mr Efficiency]

One way to find out, cut a square of insulation glass, place it in a shallow pan of catalysed resin, say a quarter inch deep. Compress it down with a flat piece of steel and keep applying weight till it is squashed right down flat, into the resin. Stand back till it sets up, then inspect your panel. Make a small coffee table out of it.

 

[Blueknarr]

Burned a boat up using it as a bull filler.
Too resin rich. Created way to much exotherm.

 

[kapnD]

I doubt that fiberglass insulation will ever beat product designed for the job.
I’ve made some oddball one off “things“ for the movie and tourist industries, mostly utilizing sprayed foam and fiberglass chop over plywood and wire mesh armatures. Normally requires little structure, so pretty easy work compared to boatbuilding.
It can be very profitable, unlike boatbuilding, just not much demand for such.

 

[CocoonCruisers]

Interesting ! Guess we could see this as a cheapo variant of these 3D woven fabrics that are so fashionable on composites trades fairs.
(Usage is just as you suggest, squeeze it down with the impregnation roller, hope for it to pop back up into the original shape and develop cross-bracing as the resin hardens)

Now the problem i'd see with glass wool or rock wool is that it is mostly unidirectional, only slightly felted. I suppose you still want it to act as a core (low-performance but it would still have a structural role). Wouldn't it be hard to achieve a reasonable compression strength and shear strength in the various required directions *at the same time* ?

Also, fiberglass for composites is typically clean (while glass/rock wool is full of fiber dust) and treated (etched if i remember right) to help resin adhesion.

 

[HCB66]

Not sure really it's a lot of material and it's thick. I suppose it could be wadded up into a lot of shapes kind of like putty and compressed to give it some strength.

 

[fallguy]

Burned a boat up using it as a bull filler.
Too resin rich. Created way to much exotherm.

I am sorry, but this made me laugh. I live in Minnesota. I needed a laugh.

If you tried to saturate all the fibers of that stuff, you'd need a s..t ton of resin and the first thing I thought when I read the post was, smoke and fire.

 

[fallguy]

Of course, I have a very curious brain, so I instantly started to wonder about using it as a core. Perhaps on the vac table with glass on the table side and a c***, whatchamightcallit, to press it flat. Then flip it over and do it again. Only trouble is, there would be nothing to maintain the core integrity unless you ran the resin down and through and that just sounds like a ton of resin. Saying no. Lost interest...fast

 

[Blueknarr]

Yes lots of resin was used in the early afternoon. It smoldered for a few hours. Fire department arrived at 2am. Their hoses pump a sufficient amount of water to sink a 30fter in less than ten minutes.

Still can't work in that particular marina.