What are you guys using?
I am in the market to test some other bags and just seeing what you guys are using?
If you are doing reasonable production runs of same items, wouldnt it be worth while looking at RTM using resin moulds?
This is a very fast process, and can be a lot cheaper than vacuum, as long as you are making enough units to justify set up costs.
Richmond here (but they donated a bunch to us…:p)
But if you are doing med. to large production runs, I’d be making either silicone, latex or Polyurethane reusable bags for each mold. Those can also be attached to the mold for storage to save the mold surfaces too.
JM
I seriously want to try that silicon ones out. my supplier was telling me how easy they are to make.
Man it would be so nice to just snap in a bag and call it a day.
i am using silicone bags now too. Not as impressed as I thought I was going to be. I use them on my frames of my hoods and that is about it. It only saves me like 10 minutes for a hood skin.
Who was the silicon supplier? How hard was it to make?
I dunno…the biggest costs I have is my bagging supplies. I make a bunch of smaller parts and the time it takes and amount of crap it takes to get them bagged is a pain. Thats the one thing Id like to be able to get done faster…bagging and what not.
If I could eliminate that stuff Id be happy…but I wonder about pitfalls like how easy it is to rip it and the time spent to make the channels for the silicone bags
If you need to make many pleats in your mold bagging, with a custom silicone or latex bag full eliminates it.
For material, try looking up my materials list and for BJB (silicone & Polyurathanes), Revchem (all even latex) or PTM&W. Also Airtech (I think I need to add them to the list…opps) even has a complete kit set up.
With the silicone you can get clear and the others maybe not be clear but if you know what you are doing and time wise to VIP, it sholdn’t be a problem.
There’s another spray on bagging material that I have infromation on (was post here somewhere) but I have a doc. appt. to remove a boil on my back on the spline…no fun and school tonight too!:o
If you are making reasonble numbers of smaller parts, then why dont you try RTM? Production time is far faster, and cost is much reduced after the cost of making a 2 part RTM mould has been covered.
RTM is not a lot of use if you are looking to make larger parts, like car hoods, but seems to me ideal for smaller type parts, as long as you are looking at making a reasonable number.
I’ll play devils advocate here…lol…what is RTM? 
And does anyone have a web link to the process?
RTM= Really Tall Monsters?
Redhead Tail sMashers?:eek:
Resin Transfer Moulding. Its a very common industrial process, which generally uses aluminium tooling, that is heated to lessen cycle time. Resin is injected into tool under pressure, and in industrial applications cycle time can be very short indeed. Thers are a few paragraphs on this process in the Forbes Aird book, under “Resin Injection”.
I started to get interested in this process after a long talk with a material suppliers tech guy, who told me about a customer of thiers who was using simple resin moulds to RTM parts such as motorcycle engine side cases, and was having a great deal of success with the process.
Obviously the learning curve with something like this is pretty steep, but it seems to me if you are producing appreciable numbers of single parts, rather than mainly one offs, it beats messing around with vacuum hands down, as its faster, cheaper, with far less chance of anything going wrong.