Could the Vulcan16 double as a composite oven?

While I do powder coat work from time-to-time, I find myself doing an increasing amount of carbon fiber composite work. The only thing missing on this oven are provisions for vacuum ports and it could double as a composite curing oven! How hard would it be to add/drill vacuum ports through the side or back wall? Is there any internal framing to avoid that would get in the way of drilling? Or are the wall internals just insulation?

I’ve been eyeing the EasyComposites OV301 composite oven for some time. But there’s no US-based supplier so it needs to be shipped from the UK. At $3K base price plus tariff and freight shipping costs, it becomes way over priced for us yanks. If Langmuir added a couple (optional) vacuum ports like pictured above, they could tap another segment in the market for this oven!

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You would suck it in like a train car without a vent.

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The vacuum lines hookup to a vacuum sealed bag inside the oven that contains the composite part. The vacuum ports on the side of the oven would simply be passthrough so the bagged part can be hooked up to vacuum inside the oven while it’s curing at elevated temps. On the other side of the ports pictured above (inside the oven) would be silicon hose(s) that connect to the vacuum bagged part. So ultimately, there’s no vacuum being pulled in the oven–only the vacuum sealed bag containing the composite part. Very simple really. If there’s no internal wall framing to worry about on the Vulcan when drilling holes for the vacuum port, this will be very straight forward to do. A picture is worth a thousand words:

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In that case, it will probably work. I assumed you were pulling a vacuum on the oven itself. I know a lot of shit, but nothing about what you’re doing. Sounds cool. The oven maintains the set point very well. I believe that it just rocks wool inside the oven’s walls.

Awesome…For $1200 and a simple vacuum port mod, this could be a GREAT dual use oven: powder coat AND composite oven…nothing else at this price point on the market for composite curing ovens! A Vulcan16 is in my future. :slight_smile:

Would work fine as a primary curing oven for bagged infusions or prepreg or as a post cure oven. You might want to use a piece of high temp silicone tubing to create a thermal break between your inner and outer bulkhead fittings if possible. It won’t matter for composite curing, but the fittings on the outside might get pretty pretty hot during powder oven operations.