Ski Builders Forum

It's been a while since I pressed a pair of skis, but this afternoon I decided to finally layup a pair that has been sitting ready in the mold for almost a year. wetting everything out went well, and I got them all setup, in the vacuum bag, and turned on the pump... then I realized that the bag had a lot of leaks and my pump doesn't have enough flow to keep an acceptable vacuum pressure. With a the epoxy going off, I needed a solution, and my little vacuum cleaner was sitting there right in front of my.

I cut a hole in the bag, taped the vacuum hose to the hole and turned on the vacuum... Wow, it worked great! I have left it running now for five hours straight and it hasn't burned up yet!


I can't say that the household vacuum cleaner is a good solution, but it certainly seems to work well in a bind.

5 hours?
OMG!

Yeah that works, and gets a lot more flow rate than a vacuum pump (= sucks it down faster)... but those things are not designed to run continuously, nor under load.

Good thing you were able to save the skis, but you gotta check your stuff before your mix your epoxy! Lesson-learned! I like to dry run everything before I pour any epoxy, including a check of how much air I have in my compressor (I like it full, in case I inflate the hose, find an issue, and have to deflate it to adjust, and reinflate)

ya, I did a dry run, and everything went smoothly in the actual layup (this wasn't my first pair of skis) I just didn't count on the bag leaking as much as it did... it has been sitting a couple years since I pressed last time, and I think it must have gotten damaged during a workshop reorganization. I'm just hoping that the old epoxy cures okay. right now everything is cured except a few spots where I tried to use up some old epoxy... bad idea.

MontuckyMadman wrote:5 hours?
OMG!

sorry about my use of exclamation points... they tend to use exclamation points on everything here (in Sweden), and occasionally my languages get blended together.


the vacuum is going on 8 hours now. I was expecting it to start smoking a long time ago.

8 HOURS!!!!!!!!!!
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!

Poor vacuum cleaner

Hmm, maybe it would be an interesting solution if you can get a good enough seal on the bag.
I think a valve could be used to keep the bag under vacuum, and by placing a pressure sensor inside the bag (placed before the valve), one could build a pressure switch so that the vacuum cleaner would only start if pressure increases inside the bag past a certain threshold. Guess it would be a good way to prevent the vacuum cleaner from setting anything on fire :P

I'm thinking something along the lines of an Arduino and a pressure sensor to read the pressure and set the threshold. And using a transistor to control an electromechanical relay so the 220v part can be separated entirely from the low voltage circuit. Maybe even incorporate a small lcd to display current pressure and 2 buttons to control the target pressure

You want him to use an Arduino?? Hes too cheap to get another vacuum bag.
Ha.

Haha, thx MontuckyMadman for that reply; it really made my morning at work so much better

Guess I was thinking too much about myself cause I have all the stuff left over from my final year project from college, plus a spare vacuum cleaner. It would be a nice way to save 200E on a decent vacuum pump, cause I'm dirt cheap as well