Mix ceramic powder with the delo monopox resin but pressure treat it 😉

In mixing any material in epoxy, you are mainly just testing the bullet resistance of the epoxy. The junk added to the epoxy just produces different colors and adds very little to the properties. You need to melt these powders together and get them to join together at the molecular level. That is what makes them strong.

Your channel deserves so much more attention than it is currently getting. Hoping you get to 10k subs soon!

Sintered is the way to go. Do a boron carbide ceramic and with a gradient of boron in the front. You want to maximize break strength in the front of the tile to cause a phase change(liquefy) in the bullet to flatten and break it up(high energy physics), but the bulk of the tile you want to maximize compression strength and expand the surface area of the bullet. I'd try solid-state pressureless sintering of silicon carbide powder. Then melt aluminum sheet into the back to hold it together and help expand the impact lowering the PSI of the bullet. That is you want the high compression strength material pushed forward by the bullet. Then put that in front of a reinforced HDPE layer to absorb that force and it will do amazing. If done right you can exceed what the military has by a bit. PS: Experiment more using fiberglass as glass fiber has tensile strengths up to 624,000 psi. Try making a fiberglass HDPE matrix composite.

Rock & roll brother!

FYI: (I've done some research on Composite Ballistic design) 1. Try adding a layer of SiC between the layers of fiberglass. S-2 Fiberglass is the strongest fiberglass and is used in ballistic fiberglass panels. Wicks aircraft & motorsports sells fiberglass weaves using S2. 2. I don't believe you will be able to sinter SiC in a microwave, simply because you won't be able to maintain the temperature long enough to get good bonding between the grains. You also need to use the sinter aid boron to get the SiC particles to bind (Toxic). You likely need to use a argon as a shield gas when you try to sinter SiC to prevent the carbon from oxidizing. You could try sintering in a desktop kiln with an argon feed and make small tiles. I believe SiC needs to be pressed together in a high pressure press to get the grains compacted for good bonding. 3. You could try making porcelain tiles that have SiC included in porcelain clay. You probably have to experiment with different levels of SiC mixed in (probably start with low concentrations. I believe the max you want to use is about 3% SiC by weight. Any more will degrade weaken the bonding of porcelain (based upon the research I found) 3. Try using much larger grit size for SiC. I found 36 Grit SiC available on amazon (Rock Shed Products) 4. I would recommend using 4130 steel alloy for front & backer plates (since its a lot harder than mild steel). or you can try case hardening mild steel 5. You can buy Silicon Carbide Kiln Shelves (Nitride bonded), but they aren't inexpensive ( About $130 for 12"x24" tile) & I have no idea how strong they would be for ballistics. Nitride Bonded SiC tile is produced in a kiln at about 1400C (2500F) with a pure nitrogen atmosphere. So if you wanted to make your own SiC Nitride tiles you need a kiln that can operated at temps greater than 2500F.

Well thank you for saving me time and effort for trying to do this.wish I was still on the discord but that's all right I was pretty inactive.

I highly recommend you get a vacuum pump and bags to form your resin plates. It will pull all the air out and get more compression of your resin w/ your ceramic, etc. A true kiln is a great idea as well.

This is waaaay better than watching a stupid mini-series on netflix! In fact....... canceling Netflix!!!!!!

Love you're work man you go the right way

Lexan alone - from 1/4" upwards is very bullet-resistant. Porcelain is very destructive to accelerated matter that strikes it. Hardox or any of the derivatives - any higher carbon steel also has good ballistic properties. Ballistic nylon is incredible at absorbing energy. Porcelain layer - covered with a binder material of any strong woven fiber material - followed by 1/4" of Lexan, backed by 1/4" of ballistic nylon sheet, backed with 1/4" of Hardox steel or similar with commercial bedliner sprayed onto the back will stop close to every "normal" round encountered. That's a 27mm (roughly) laminate panel or just over 1 inch of material. That's 4 simple layers anyone can produce. Plus any old woven fiber for the front. Porcelain, Lexan, ballistic nylon, hardox. Laminate them using a tough but flexible adhesive - windscreeen bond/Tec 7 or similar. Buy tiles, some polycarbonate sheet, some high density nylon sheet & a high carbon steel sheet, glue them together with a flexible but tough adhesive, spray the back with bedliner for spalling & skip all the "Research". It's ballistics, not rocket science. Glass, Lexan, Glass, Lexan, Glass - that's the glazing. With a tint-film on the back for spalling. Again - don't over-complicate it. Just use proven materials. We have some 50mm thick ballistic nylon left over from a job we did - that's a pretty spendy material. 5cm of pure energy vampire material. If that was laminated with good porcelain tiles on the front, 1/4" of hardox on the back, I doubt anything short of a .50 cal would even make it blink - & that's just 3 layers. Just drilling a hole in 50mm ballistic nylon is a massive pita - it burns out drills & saws for fun. All the worlds viagra & billions in cigarettes sit in security cages I worked on in past careers - I understand what stops what - and what doesn't.

In the composites industry we use steel reinforced resin alongside fiber fabric.

Great Video man!

very interesting. thanks for this. when trying to sinter silicon carbide it needs high pressure and temperature. good luck on exploring how to do that... so far what I have found is you need a 1 ton press (can be rocks, tires or rubber ducks..) pressing down onto a point high temp surface.

I was toying with a similar concept except my method idea was pressing it in a mold with hot ar500 and hot ceramic on a ventilated mold on my shop press.

Excellent topic and exploration

Can you add kevlar or fiberglass fibers/mat to resin? Like pre used body armor kevlar vest fibers, etc?

Maybe some ceramic pellets for tumbling glue

Try adding 1mm ceramic spheres in with your epoxy, going heavy with the spheres. The ceramic should not only absorb and redistribute energy but cause decent deformation to the projectile and redirecting parts throughout. I'd imagine this would handle multiple impacts much better than a solid ceramic plate.

Ideally, youd want to use ceramic spheres in different sizes 9mm spheres added first, followed by 3mm spheres, and then 1mm spheres to your mold, followed by your filler/resin. That should get you at about 85-95% ceramic density, and you can mix up which ceramics you use. You'd need, by volume, 9 parts 9mm spheres, 3 parts 3mm spheres and 1 part 1mm spheres to achieve the correct ratio. The major advantage to this method is that your armor would be moldable. Whether or not it works, however... i have no idea. But the theory is sound.

I make composite (mostly carbon fiber) parts for a living. Other than the fact you aren’t using a high heat controlled treatment process, the main reason that you didn’t see any significant increase over store-bought porcelain tiles is because you don’t have a fiber matrix being held in place by the “composite” putty. Composite structures get their strength from the fibers which are held in place by the hardened epoxy. All you’re effectively doing is making a super hard and brittle epoxy brick, which will perform much worse than a true ceramic like porcelain. (As your tests confirmed) If you left the putty a bit more runny (liquid) and used layers of ballistic aramid or S-class fiberglass with thin layers of the putty between them, you would have a more true “composite” structure which would hold together much more effectively. So even if a portion of the ceramic was shot up and shattered, it would still be holding some semblance of integrity because of the fiber matrix layered into the ceramic and it would still help to fragment and slow down bullets coming into contact with it.

Hemp fibre mats infused with resin / metal nps with a bit of graphene . Pressed into plates

A layered dragon skin type ceramic would be cool to see

Cast aluminum, mix the ceramic powder in for matrix metal ceramic, which are on the front line of research

I've done some light research into the sintering temps for these high end ceramics you're using in powder form. And honestly, I don't think you will be able to get these powders anywhere near the temperature you need to properly sinter them even with a microwave kiln. Now that isn't to say that you can't use these ceramics at all, there is actually a way to get around this problem, I'll name a few: Since our little microwave kiln can only get up to about 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.Aluminum Oxide needs 2500 F to sinter, SIC needs 4500 F sintering temp, and Boron/Tungsten Carbide need to sinter at 5,000+ Fahrenheit. You can pack these powders into wet porcelain clay from craft stores or mix them with powdered glass since the microwave kiln is designed to melt glass and fire/sinter porcelain ceramic it would be a no brainer to use these powders as an additive to those materials since it would be really easy to melt glass and sinter porcelain with the temperature we're working with here. You could also mix any of these powders with sodium silicate in liquid form in a 1 to 1 ratio and apply it with a brush to the outside of store bought ceramics from a hardware store to save yourself the trouble of firing porcelain clay in a microwave. If you make your own high end glass or porcelain armor tiles you need to melt a metal layer into the back of your tiles with the microwave kiln. Although you could use aluminum for this, I recommend using aluminum bronze instead due to its increased strength and fracture toughness over other soft metals. Aluminum Bronze has tensile strength hardness and toughness comparable to low strength steels like mild steel and would melt since the kiln probably gets more than hot enough to melt it. I recommend putting a large thick glass container over the kiln when doing this so the escaping plasma doesn't kill your microwave. Hope this helps with your next video project on homemade ceramics! 😃

I like the homespun idea of it all, however, cost of time and meterials outweighs what can be purchased over the counter currently. Why shouldnt we explore that facet more in depth? Using store bought ceramic tiles, with various layered fabric backers???

If you can figure out how to sinter silicon carbide into hexagonal tiles at home, your sir will have won this game

You need to layer it !!! I'm glad everyone followed my lead on.this but it must be done in layers !!! a 10 pump bbgun can shoot through Milk jug depending on the pumps but shooting Pete bottles won't go through!!! You may get through 1 side but it WON'T go through the other!!!! 100layers over the hdpe with each fiberglass layer covered in the silicon carbide paste pressed flat under hundreds may doit .... Silicone carbide from home depot is designed to eat concrete so it will definitely eat through the Kevlar...

Please keep up the good work, this some high quality stuff right here.

Was thinking of doing this using for first layer 2-2.5lbs (inch or so thick) silicon carbide and diamond powder first layer (good for rifles), under that layer 40-80 layers of kevlar, attaching using hotglue using a lot of glue and all over the back of the kevlar, like 6 oz (0.1 inches or so). Under than layer doing a tungsten carbide and more diamond and silicon carbide and finally under that layer another 40-80 layers of kevlar attached with a lot of glue. Than also would get a good spall guard and put it up in and it probably would stop anything since it'd be almost 3 inches of super hard hardness level. Also was thinking of using silicon carbide sand paper and thin layers of glue and layers of that with layers of kevlar.

You know that random angular partials lock together when packed together you visualizing balls

Assuming that you will be still trying to do tiles without using a kiln, you could try adding in polypropylene fibers, similar to the ones that are added to cement during construction work, as they would strengthen the resin and allow it to stay together under more stress- without raising the costs by a significant amount.

The Resin and ceramic powder mixture is too porous without vacuum Bagging and Fiber reinforcement. It may be hard (compressive stenght) but its tensile strength is too weak to withstand bullet impact. This is common issue when designing ceramic plating. Very interesting video and topic nevertheless :0)

Try creating a tight grain direction, and then sandwich them in layers like plywood… more layers the better. Perhaps with a few layers of ceramic fiber fabric

You might want to compare époxy and HDPE as binders for particles as well. (You might remember the samples i made on the discord and the results wheren t Bad , even against the small Steel core pellets )

My understanding is that the ceramic tiles in armor are coated with silica carbide. The idea is the hardness of the carbides and of the tile spreading the force takes the velocity down then a dense uhmwpe backing catches the bullet.

i know the AlOx chemically work hardens the epoxy, i assume the same of SiCa. Ever heard of cultured marble? Corian was epoxy with AlOx, the others were similar, that's a half in to start tho. i was thinking of just making a thin forged carbon fiber skin with SiCa and AlOx to go over composite ballistic panels, and PC between those of course, thanks for checking this out

I would go something like a very rubbery and tough resin/construction adhesive for the binder w ceramic powder or sand, and sandwich that between 1/16 mild steel, that stuff, fabric, more stuff, more fabric, and another thin mild steel. I think a more flexible binder might (might) give you more of an amorphous solid type action. I don't know, but I do know the brits are working on amorphous solid body armor. You might also consider thinning out your resin- like you can use MEK to impregnate fabric with silicone permanently (NighthawkinLight had a good vid on that). I think that way you could really get a more consistent mix of resin and your powders, and the solvent would evaporate. I think you could really incorporate the ceramic powder and the fabric into a cohesive thing.

This is especially an advantage if you are making odd shaped curved small plates of hdpe like my batman suit project, obviously it isn't as good as porcelain but should do fine against most handguns and 223 or 556 with the hdpe backer, and that's basically the protection I'm looking for.

Maybe you need to bake the ceramic in the oven, that's how we do gres(hardened ceramics for home flooring) in Italy as far as I know

Howdy, i suggest Experimenting With Different Ratios of Carbon and Graphene Heavy on the Graphene

How about adding kevlar fibers into the resins?

I would love to see resin and ceramic fiber insulation (the kind you line a forge/kiln with). When you get it the fibers are already nice and interlaced, but you can pull it apart if you want. I imagine it would be best to keep the fibers as they are and somehow infuse the resin into it while compressing it into the shape of a plate. Anyone with the equipment to do that?

I think this mix with a real epoxy and some kevlar chop with about %2-3% flex agent in the epoxy. Polyester resin is very brittle compared to normal epoxy and has a much weaker bond. Good epoxy should be clear and not smell super strong. A slow epoxy is always stronger at the end and keep in mind every resin not matter the type will always be stronger at 30days than 15days by a noticeable amount. Its fully cured at 90days but the biggest difference is in that first 30days. Degasing the resin in the mold should allow a thin slow epoxy to dig into the media. I would also bet you need more resin to media ratio. Generally speaking it should pour and flow at it's best ratio. Sounds counterintuitive but the epoxy will encapsulate the media better and bond everything together better. I do think some s glass with some good epoxy applied to this block while it's still sticky but gel would allow for a chemical bond that's a 1000xs stronger than the mechanical bond you currently are using this should stop your delamination issues all together and also reinforce the block from breaking down into tiny pieces as easily.

Mix ceramic powder with molten milk jug HDPE, It's not brittle as epoxy and the powder is very abrasive, will further slow down the projectiles I think. Try aluminum oxide, it's cheap and looks good!

Consider more area to dissipate the impact .

Can you add colloidal silica, or sodium silicate, instead of resin and then press to bind it? Sinter it at low temp and see if that is improved vs. porcelain.

Put is a kiln, a mold with layered ceramic with Kevlar in between like a sammich

I have utilized super glue In conjunction with Baking soda To create a very strong Bonding I have also seen cigarette ash being used If you were to impregnate A fiber And then set off the reaction All at once I will have to try this You could probably use Fiberglass to reinforce it

You would have seen the fibreglass (fire-blanket) versions with epoxy. Strengthened glass _(as per stain glass windows "doping" and gorilla-glass style glass)_ can be made by dipping (already hot) glass into Molten Potassium _(potentially made via electrolysis, anode cathode)._ Perhaps using methacrylate instead of epoxy could create a different "ceramic plate" and then that layer might go behind the epoxy layer whether they are the same thickness of half as thick. (Poly) Methyl-Methacrylate _(as used in industrial usages like pouring a hospital hallway floor or medical usage like a hip-replacement)_ is an exothermic reaction. So you can use a heat source to force it to cool slowly. Or you can use a cooling source to make it cool fast. Glass crystal sizes can be affected in a similar way when cooling. You could deliberately affect the coefficient of restitution _(bounciness, such as a steel ball has a different coefficient of resitution compared to a toughened-glass-ball when "bounced")._ In curing, Hydroquinone is added as an inhibitor preventing polymerisation (setting) of the PMMA liquid. Glycol dimethacrylate is used as a cross-linking agent in PMMA (dentistry) and is chemically structured in a a way similar to methyl methacrylate so as to incorporate it into growing polymer chains. The [P(MMA-co-BA-co-AA)] synthesized via seeded emulsion polymerization. See University of Malaya, Physics papers. Sunlight messes with plastics and the photons cause that photodegredation, and you would have experienced this as many other people have also. A photon _(at the right energy level in the energy gap)_ degrades the plastic at a Carbon to Oxygen double bond C=O (as in carbonyl bonds). Looking at 3:17 as a picture: At 120fps or much faster, filming the impact of the bullet with a heat-camera could show the energy dispersal when the kinetic energy of the bullet is converted into heat energy of the "ceramic" sheet breaking up as you impart the impulse of the particle (bullet) through it. Graphs (to compare) already exist which show the degradation of high molecular weight PMMA or _(poly)methyl methacrylate-co-butyl acrylate-co-acrylic acid,_ thereby graphing the Wavenumber vs Absorbance. You could shine UV or InfraRed through it as you film it so as to detect displacement of hotspots indicating the photons interchanging with electrons in the energy gap (heat and light). A doping-glass sheet could be "coated" in a ceramic plate by half-sinking it into the liquid methacrylate (or epoxy) as it hardens. You could add a (cross-link) vulcanised-rubber layer as the bullet exits so as to catch the particles to stop them entering the object the (sort of) "bullet-proof" ceramic is "attempting" to be protecting. I would say that the rubber _(like a self-healing bike inner-tube)_ could have that "air-reaction" adhesive inside it _(like a twinkie cream inside a twinkie sponge of rubber)_ as a vacuum-seal to react with air upon catching the particles like a "glue" on rubbery flypaper. So it is like a twinkie or stuffed-crust molten cheese pizza but the whole way through like a poptart. So that is for catching shrapnel dust and resin dust. My comment has no hate in it and I do no harm. I am not appalled or afraid, boasting or envying or complaining... Just saying. Psalms23: Giving thanks and praise to the Lord and peace and love.

I had an idea a while back to mix some silica carbide powder and epoxy and paint it thick on a mosaic ceramic tile and back it with Kevlar sheets epoxy it together. But shit by the time I got that done I may as well buy some. Plates which I did instead lol

Hi how about using carbide grit and melted UHMWPE ?

I know that the direction you’re going is more towards sintered ceramic, but I’m curious if you’ve tried to add lose fiber reinforcement to the new resin tiles. Is what they do to cement to keep it from being brittle (like when making cement workout weights). Also curious if you’ve also though about autoclaving the tiles while curing to remove air bubbles.

Thought: put a sheet of chain mail in it, high carbon spring-steel ideally that will bend before it breaks. Plus maybe bond a sheet of rubber to one side to act as a shock absorber

Do you want an idea for an armour plate?, Try this one: make one with layers of paper, elmers glue and between 5 layers use super glue, press the whole thing with weights, and you can test how many layers can do stop a bullet

Chromium carbide is harder than tungsten carbide cohort, you may consider this for a strike face

I used lexan from home depot cut it into sheets of 10 x 12 flexed sealed 2 layers together and stacked 2 of those layers so its 2 lexan bound to ceramic 2x3 tiles times 2 all backed by 1/2 inch of tight weave fiber glass and the whole thing is incased in resin stops everything I have up to 308

Gummy bear and finely ground ceramic.

Try adding 1-19 cable laced into the resin. It should help even out the compression/ tension problems with the mix. Think concrete, extreme compression strength but horrible tension strength.

yo I thought of making high temperature ceramics in a microwave when I first saw a video about the microwave kiln.

When talking about the ping pong balls example... what if you reverse the process like opposite opposite then then theory on impact since we know the bullet shatters this will actually catch and misdirect the fragments thus reducing energy in a single direct.

How about adding some bubbles? Maybe if tou make a foam structure it becomes harder, like aluminiun foam

Mix fiberglass in ceramics. Then coat w/ loctite Aircrete + fiberglass maybe

Actually, the better it cracks, the more force it can absorb so your drop test only proven that porcelain is better at energy absorption. What could be nice is to have a porcelain reinforced with steel or fiberglass.

I've been thinking about using titanium diboride in-between the first four layers of alternating carbon fiber and uhmwpe. I might still try it but I might see if there is a way to either make the resin harder or softer. Harder and you get closer to a solid ceramic, but softer and you might get something like a non newtonian fluid. The difference for the soft one would be that I would be using more durable materials than silica and starch.

I understand the science aspect of trying something new, but you could just make ceramic with the ingredients. Ceramic is actually very easy to make at home, and you can make a homemade Kiln very easily as well.

SUPPLY SiC/B4C ceramic plates manufacturing material and read-use inserts

Perhaps much, much larger fragments of Ceramic or multi layering large fragments. The bond between those micro fragments is only as strong as the resin

I looked into annealing HDPE. It's behind a paywall! :-(. I'm interested in using alumina with resin to make a stronger binding agent to use with Kevlar. That is, the Kevlar would be layered in with the resin/alumina mixture before it becomes unworkable. Have you any experience there? What might be really useful is using melted HDPE with alumina (or some other ceramic) to create a binding agent with Kevlar or other high temperature aramids.

Answer no without watching. Ceramic is about the way it fractures that takes energy. Turn the ceramic to powder and the fracture energy will be lost. If you have a single fibreglass layer holding ceramic tiles in place with a layered fibreglass back likely it will be much better. Also flexable filler layers can help in a similar way to spaced armour that will cause spread. The interesting thing would be more thin layers than thick of ceramic backed a multilayer fibreglass without exotics such as a final kevlar and less dense liteweight spacer layers.

Kiln fired ceramics are rock. Ceramic filled resin is resin.

Wonder what you could do with graphene

That was the idea behind the silicon carbide form home depot line.... I have put the ideas out hoping we could create at the very least a barrier of bullet eating toughness but it's no good on its own! as I said when I did the research.months ago and made my post.... The idea will work if done correctly and I don't blame you for misunderstanding , I see you were doing your own take on the idea .

A channel named Tech ingredients did this before and it worked and he did it by using gravel sized alumina and densified it with smaller silicone carbide aggregate mixed in a epoxy matrix

Also, need some nickle powder and silica .

Please see the latest Guns and Gadgets video about the 6th circuit Court stating no open carry.

Try use a layer of granite stone in front of a steel plate and overlap all in fiberglass+resin

What about using lead or tungsten powder?

The issue is layering correctly, front of plate to back. 3cm hdpe, 1cm fiberglass alernating with1cm dyneema- 3 layers; steel slugs 2cm thick 2layers dragon scale configuration!,1/8th inch ceramic tile 2mm D30 foam, 2cm hdpe, d30 motorcycle padding for chest or back dependent on where it goes. Itll stop a 7.62 if the right epoxies and additives are used, which you can find on your own... think Non Newtonian.

Excellent video! Love this channel! What type of resin did you use to have time to thoroughly knead the material before it starts to set and harden? Also do you have a link for where you get your spectra cloth? Been looking for a woven type UHMWPE that isn’t pressed together fibers like dyneema

I was wonder how using and or intergrating dragaon scale,helix,honeycomb patterns with liquid metals, and or wax or a 3 part system like in the fish that produces a milk ,that basically has a hard outer layer mixed with a binding substance or fiber that bond and repairs itself to the inner layer and There are a set of phones by Lg I believe that have a plastic backing that can repair itself. Anyways Cool stuff to think about.

There are low viscosity epoxies / resins available, which should in theory increase the particulate to resin count. What do you think 🤔

Where can I buy these materials??

Would it be possible to mix different grain sizes and different ceramic together to make a composite plate and what about using fiber glass mat as fabric baking for a homemade dragon skin

Where do u get the ceramic powder?

I have a ceramic kiln. I wonder if mixing something like graphite powder into ceramic and firing it would work worth a crap for anything?

Hi I found an Army article on light weight helicopter ballistic armor capable of stopping 50 cal. How do I send it you? I am older and some of this tech alludes me.

Have you tried adding steel shot to the resin

Don't use microwave, use heat box which are used for (laminated)Bow heat treat making search on KZfaq, it's very easy, made in 2 hours and will help epoxy resin to cure faster and better.

Nice

The problem that you are experiencing with making these tiles is removing all the excess moisture out of the mixture before pressing them into tiles, you need to use a spray dryer to remove the excess moisture out of the mixture. Another problem that you are experiencing is the fact that you are not putting these tiles into a oven and cooking them These tiles are made out of different types of carbide So heating pressing them or cooking the tiles in a oven will make the tiles a higher density similar to how you would heat treat met al to increase the strength and density of the metal

Don't you need a literal ton of pressure for b4c?

I wonder if polyethylene glycol would have done better, since that's what was used in the liquid amor patent

Me thinks perhaps inspired by chobam

Or resin and fish tank pebbles

Its only as strong as the resin. Carbides need sintered. 80%boron carbide 20% silica carbide

do you still make diy armor videos?

I wonder how it would do if you embedded steel or ceramic plates into the center of your plastic armor?

Can I get a new discord link invite? The one listed is expired.

Yea, but how does relative humidity factor in. If I make this in the middle of a muggy summer day how does it affect my results? I'm going to need you to do it again...considering all the variables this time