ISU Concrete Canoe 2009-2010

A great year!

2010-05-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

The regional competition has passed and the concrete canoe team has had a fulfilling year! We did very well at competition taking 3rd place overall with 1st in the oral presentation, 3rd in overall product, and 3rd in races! On top of that we had the lightest boat there weighing in at 190 pounds. The team this year was phenomenal and I hope to see everyone come back next year!

We also held our yearly clean-up day complete with a heart attack in bacon-rolled form! Enjoy some of the pictures from competition and clean-up.

If anyone should have any questions about this years boat, CyDuct, or concrete canoe in general, feel free to email either me or Will at the email addresses shown in the top left corner.

Thanks for a great year team!

Patrick

the CyDuct has reached adolescence...

2010-02-25T21:45:00.000-08:00

It has been a few weeks since my last post but i've been busy so there. Since pour day we've been meeting regularly sanding and making CyDuct look pretty like so:

No cracks have been observed so far which is great because last year we had some pretty big ones right down the middle. This is most likely due to the fibers we added into the mix this year.

CyDuct is turning out to be one nice looking boat.

On the 24th of February CyDuct was removed from the mold. This process can be seen in time-lapse format below:

Thanks to all of those who showed up to help out! The whole process couldn't have gone any smoother. The steel spine popped right out and so do the fiberglass mold. This process took less than an hour where as last year taking the canoe off the mold took around a week. The week included the time spent removing the styrofoam. The fiberglass mold came off in one piece and we are looking into making it into a practice boat. The duct tape removed will be reused as a makeshift kickball.

A few spots need to be patched and some sanding needs to be done on the inside of CyDuct. Overall, things couldn't be going smoother.

Pour Day = Success

2010-01-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

The canoe looks great. We definitely had a great pour day. Thanks to all of those who showed up! Check out the video and possible theme idea??

End caps, runners, and reinforcement oh my!

2010-01-14T17:56:00.000-08:00

Wednesday night was another super productive night! We managed to get the runners done, the reinforcement measured out, and the end caps shaped. A special thanks to kevin for assembling his spotty wire cutter complete with hacksaw. And can you believe a company tried to get us to pay over $1000 for one of these??? All we needed is a old computer power supply, some wire, and a lot of guts to press the "on" button. Pictures n videos below. enjoy.

Back! It's boat makin time! almost...

2010-01-11T21:07:00.000-08:00

So after a month of partying, drinking, and eating cookies we are all back and ready to make this thing happen. Tonight was our first meeting of the semester and we were super productive! we got the fiberglass mold cut and plastered! Add a few runners and some release agent and we're gunna be ready for concrete! Watch the time lapse! see if you can see me light the dremel on fire.... ANNDD a super special hello to our newest concrete canoe team member! The creepy guy in the blue hat!!

hey! it looks like a canoe kinda!

2009-12-12T17:33:00.000-08:00

This week we have been very productive! During the week we preped the mold for our fiberglass with duct tape and today we applied the resin! Also, we are playing with our new webcam at spangler so some cool videos should be popping up. I think we are about done for the semester. we are definitely on track to have a late january pour date. Here are some pictures n such:

(notice will picking his nose in the first shot haha)

final mold? what? duct tape? oh yea!

2009-12-09T21:02:00.001-08:00

Well hello faithful viewers! It has been awhile since my last post but we sure have got a lot done!! We have completed testing on two practice molds and have now started the assembly of the final mold!! We are well on track for a late January pour date! Our new mold technique has brand new never been seen technology! DUCT TAPE!! This new process worked great. We reduced the weeks of painful Styrofoam placing and sanding into two hours of duct taping! quite amazing in my opinion. The mold will be covered with resin at our next meeting followed by plaster. Then she'll be ready for concrete! Our mix design is in its final stages and will be finalized by mid January! Here are some duct taping pictures for your viewing pleasure:

Getting ready for the final mold

2009-11-19T06:46:00.000-08:00

It has been a good week for concrete canoe. Mold #2 has been completed and will be tested with the shotcrete gun in an upcoming meeting. In this mold we created it as if we were making the final mold. This means we assembled the runners along the bottom and made cuts along the ribs to make it easier to pull the mold out from the canoe.

On Sunday we had our first fundraiser! Our team ran two concession stands at the ISU Women's Basketball game. It turned out to be a good time with lots of free food! On top of that we made 200 dollars!

Our team also received 400 dollars in sponsorship from the letters we sent out at the end of October. Go Team and yay for money!

On wednesday we broke the cement cubes that were made the previous wednesday and now we know the percentage of cementitious materials we are going to use.

Unfortunately we ran into a minor hiccup with our mix design last night but we should have things ready to go soon. Our cross sections from EFCO should be coming in any day now and we can begin work on our final mold. We are still on schedule for a pour day right when we get back from Christmas Break!

Test mold week!

2009-11-11T21:08:00.000-08:00

Our Second test mold is looking awesome. We've refined our construction technique and we have decided duct tape is the best way to cover the steel skeleton. yes, duct tape will be a major part of our construction! yayy!

After it was covered in duct tape, we once again covered it with resin and fiberglass mesh. This time we used three layers to ensure the mold doesnt undergo any deflection once the concrete is placed.

One of the more time consuming and boring tasks being done is pulling all of the bits of reinforcement out of the crushed icebreaker aggregate.

Today we did two very important things for our mix design. We poured test cylinders to determine the aggregate gradation we want to use and we poured cement paste cubes so we can determine cement mix percentages.

The test cylinders will be broken tomorrow and placed into 100% humidiy. We will be obtaining a 7-day compressive strength and a 28-day compressive strength to add us in picking our best mix. The cement paste cubes will also be placed into 100% humidity and they will be broken after 7 days.

On a side note, today at the lab we had a honors seminar class visit to get help with a project. They are building a pirate ship so we gave them some pointers on how to use fiberglass resin. Any visitors that would like to learn more about concrete canoe are always more than welcome!

Absorption Tests and Such

2009-11-08T19:18:00.000-08:00

So last week Will and I spent a good 5 hours blow drying some of our aggregate!!

No joke, sadly. We needed to know the absorption rates of the icebreaker aggregate so we can finalize some mix designs and unfortunately the tests took way longer than we thought! Because of this I received a parking ticket from the lovely DPS. balls. The tests results are interesting! Our highest absorption rate is over 40% which is reaaallly high. We don't believe this will be a problem but we are still investigating.

We also tested the shotcrete gun once again. The gun is good to go. We have the air ratios right and it is applying wonderfully. A second concrete barrel will eventually be built so we can continuously be spreading on pour day.

This upcoming week we plan on pouring a bunch of test cylinders so we can pick a mix design before winter break! We are also doing a second test mold to improve our design techniques for our new fiberglass mold method. Everybody better be there!

Halloween Week!

2009-11-03T17:58:00.001-08:00

Last week was a slower week because of multiple exams going on for much of the team. We got our sponsorship letters all signed and mailed out:

And the team made an appearance at the Better Concrete Conference on Thursday (October 29th). At the conference we were able to talk with many companies about what we are all about and new things we are doing this year. The shotcrete gun generated a lot of interest and we got a few people interested in being judges for our regional competition in April.

I was not able to make last night's meeting but I heard it went very well. The shotcrete gun was tested once again with lower water/cement ratio and it still worked wonderfully. This is really going to help us achieve our goal of even application and an overall thinner boat. Get excited Team, this is going to be a great year!

In case people are interested in what is happening behind the scenes right now I'll give you a quick rundown. Will sent in the cross-section design files to EFCO tonight meaning we will be able to start construction on our final canoe mold within a few weeks. I will be calling Poraver within the next couple of days to order more aggregate (the glass microspheres). Next week we will be batching cylinders so that we can get some 28-day strengths before the holidays. We are still brain storming as what to do for the end caps of the canoe, hand craft them in Styrofoam or possible get a hold of the Aerospace lab so we can get them machine made.

As for what YOU should be doing right now, WE NEED A TEAM THEME!!!! My idea (which usually gets shot down) is to have a viking theme! We could have concrete axes/armor! And our boat could be called CYchological Warfare! like? comment!

Sieve analysis on old Icebreaker canoe done today!

2009-10-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

After crushing nearly 7 buckets of Ice Breaker, we finally got around to seperating the aggregate. We ran a fine sieve stack and, by the looks of it, will have a well graded gradation curve. On a side note, it was very dusty.

What has happened thus far...

2009-10-21T18:49:00.000-07:00

Since we are starting this almost 2 months after our meetings started this is going to be kinda a long post to get everybody up to speed.

The two team co-captains this year (Will Hunnicutt and myself) have 4 years concrete canoe experience between them and are thrilled to be seeing along the 2009-2010 team. Our team started out the year with several new ideas that we wanted to start on right away. Some of the top ones are: fiberglass mold instead of Styrofoam, new application method (shotcrete gun), new recycled aggregate ideas, and overall better documentation of the year (hence this page!).

The first few meetings were spent getting to know new team members and going over what we want to do differently this year. A crude list was constructed:

From this list we jumped right in. The first couple of meetings at the lab we started experimenting with the epoxy and decided to construct a trial mold out of pieces of last years metal skeleton.

From here we laid down the fiberglass reinforcement and experimented with different support techniques (cardboard vs. no cardboard). The cardboard option was definitely the way to go.

This new technique will replace our old method of fitting styrofoam sheets between the metal cross sections and cutting them down to size. This is going to be a HUGE timesaver. We finished up the trial mold with plaster, latex paint, releasing agent, and some plastic tubing spacers.

While this is going we were also thinking of new ideas for our second type of recycled aggregate. We basically had two options. Either purchase expensive ceramic beads that were a little heavier than we liked, or crush one of our old canoes. We chose the crushing. Cost effective, lighter, more fun. here are some pictures and videos of the process the canoe went through.

Now for the smashing....

Like butter.....

Into the crusher!!!!

That final material is going to be sieved into the sizes we need in an upcoming meeting.

Now! For our most exciting project so far, the shotcrete gun! The shotcrete gun idea isn't a new one, we just finally have a team ready to tackle it. Our shotcrete gun was solely based off of a few pictures of what one should look like. So naturally there were quite a few trial and error situations to try to get this thing operational. Most of the gun was built over the summer by Will, Kevin, and Debbie? (musta been a boring summer..) but the hose connections weren't assembled properly until mid October. On October 7th we had a dry run with water instead of concrete (wet run?).

Yayy! It works! After adding a few modifications (chin strap) this baby was ready for concrete action. On October 21st we had our first concrete trial. This is where we are at now. After filling with concrete (thanks to the funnel) we decided to run our first spray on the side of Spangler (it needed it, believe me). Lesson learned from first trial, secure chin strap before spraying! Here are some videos of the shotcrete gun in action.

filling the gun:

Spangler repair work:

Spraying test mold:

and finally, Kevin fixing some trouble spots on the spangler driveway

is this thing on?

2009-10-21T18:44:00.000-07:00

Alright. here we go. THE FIRST EVER CONCRETE CANOE BLOG FOR IOWA STATE!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! The main idea of this is to keep everybody updated with our progress and to visually document our progress throughout the year. kay bye.