Does anybody know of a company that builds
windshields for experimental aircraft?

Paul Lamar


This is the guy I used in Grass Valley Ca.
Ray Poquette 530-272-2556
www.thermotecusa.com <http://www.thermotecusa.com/

Him and one other company advertise in the back of Sport Aviation.

I used my mold, which I learned was a very hard thing to make right.
Took three tries before I got
a windshield you could see through with out getting sea sick.

Mark K
MSK6 20B

What was the problem with your mold Mark?
I may have to build a mold unless I can find the people
that made KIS Cruiser windshields in the first place.


Paul Lamar


--
I had started with the part that I had cut out of the original piece of
fuselage which was a couple of layers of 7781 and epoxy resin over the
foam blocks I had sanded to shape. That mold literally collapsed when
the hot plastic touched it. You need to use a high temp polyester resin
and lay it up about 1/4 thick. The mold also needs to be a constant
thickness apparently or the plastic cools at a different rate and messed
up the optics. The third try was just refining the shape, smooth was not
good enough, having a constant radius and such was important. If you can
avoid making a mold I would, or maybe someone out there knows a better
way to do it. This was my first try.

Mark K
MSK6 20B

That is a male plug mold. Is that what they wanted?

That looks exactly like a cruiser wind shield.

Paul Lamar


The molds we used for the yak canopies weighed a bloody ton! The quality
area of the mold needs to extend 4 to 6 inches beyond the actual cut line of
the screen to make sure you get good quality all the way to the edges. As
far as I know, they are always done as as a plug. The plugs loaned to us
were made using about .5" of bondo filler inside a canopy, then heavy layers
of fiberglass/epoxy followed by a plywood frame again glassed in place. The
entire thing was then sanded using long board method, primed, sanded,
primed, sanded..... you know the drill.... then sealed and finish sanded.
When they molded the screen, they had a thin layer of what looked like
cotton cheese cloth over the mold before the plexi was molded down. They
would not show us the process they use, but the screens turned out perfect
with no optical distortion.
Might be worth running a wanted add on ebay or on barnstormers to see if
someone has a windscreen or the mold.
Larry