The company is axiom materials out of california. They offer a surface layer that is claimed to be a showroom finish from the mold and is one sided tack. They also offer backing layers with one or two sided tack.
They can vary their resin content as needed and claim to have many different styles of carbon they can impregnate.
I have not asked about price.
Excuse my ignorance but what does OOA stand for and what’s difference between this stuff and other stuff?
$65 yard ,245 gram 2x2 twill, 100 yard minimum. …prices from a year ago…one guy told me pretty much pinhole free, another all pinholes. Who do you want to believe?
OOA = Out Of Autoclave
Cheekybrad if the lay up schedule is correct with breather etc, debulk and dwell/ ramp are observed then I don’t think getting a top shelf finish should be a problem. Tds states 50yd min. Would you think that the higher weight fabrics are more costly?
12k $80 yd, 100 yd min. $6500+$8000= $14500 usd to get in the game 
3k $65 yd, 100 yd min.
quoted prices from last fall.
pinholes? your your results may vary, like the manufactures sales reps answers.
Get a sample of the material to test. The lay up, debulk and ramp etc is important but then you need a material that will allow you to get a perfect finish. I have done a test with a material that claimed it would be as good as the material I am currently using… I did a plate glass test with it. With 5 layers of the material being laid up from two layers thick up to 5 layers. It was not good… So i ran 3 layers of the material onto the material I use now. You can see a definite line where the pinholes stop. There are a few on there as I did run some of the other material over the back of the material I use and it did cause a few pinholes which I would not have expected to see normally. The worst part is 3 layers thick then the narrow band is 4 layers thick onto one layer of the SHD material I use now. I was looking at using it as backing if it worked as it is cheaper than the SHD material but it leaves pinholes. So I am not going to use it… I spoke to the supplier who said it was down to me so I did this little sample to show them the difference between them. I should have left a wider transition but it was just a fast test to show I get pinholes even as a backing.
So get a sample. If they think it will work pinhole free then they should have no issue with supplying a few meters/yards at a cheap price or for free. Test it before buying…
Below is an area with 2 layers of the SHD material and 4 layers of the other stuff… It it better but still not acceptable. This was the best I could get using the other material even as only a backing material. If I used it on its own it was terrible.
does… ooa mean you do not need an autoclave at all?
Correct. Just an oven and a vacuum pump.
What was your debulk like? Also did you use edge damn breather? And did you do a 8+ hour final debulk?
We did some tests and the edge damn breather had a pretty large effect on final strength of the laminates, so we do that on all parts now. The tds should have info on bagging and deubulking… i’ve noticed that most the OOA prepregs have the edge breathing as part of the procedure.
Also did you use perf or non perf relase?
We usually don’t have issues with pinholes as much as weird issues with sharp corners having a sorta boiled or gassed look. The smooth radius and flat parts tend to be ok.
I think in our case it’s a heating issue. We use tooling foam which, makes things a bit more slow to heat evenly. We found that a slow ramp and then a long dwell helped but didn’t eliminate the problems. I’m starting to think the various OOA prepregs have different abilities to breathe, the ones with the weaker breathing action have more issues it seems.
Typically for OOA you should add fiberglass toes at the perimeter of laminate to extend outside of the non perforated release and connect to the breather. This creates air path ways for air to leave laminate during cure. Typically you also don’t want to debulk for long (more than 30 mins) as this causes the air path ways to close premature to cure cycle. This is just typical, doesn’t necessarily apply to all, and you should check TDS or technical department for their recommendation
the tds of the ooa stuff i’ve used all say to do a long debulk, like 8+ hours. And to do a edge breather.
From the tests, the edge breather does effect laminate strength. Not sure if this also effects the surface quality (pinholes).
Do you connect the laminate to the edge breather by any fiberglass toes? Or none? And have you ever tried it to see if you get better results?
I have tried this myself in the past. I found it was quite limited in real terms. It did make a small difference. I then tried to get air from the surface with some peel ply on the flange and laying some material over the peel ply. This had a much greater effect. I still do it with some moulds if I know I may get trapped air on the edge of the mould.
Luckily the material I now use is very good and I only have to do this in extreme cases. I get perfect parts from edge to edge… I think it is mostly down to the material.
I do not think I would use any other supplier than SHD from now on… The down side is shipping overseas. I think they worry about delays after one customer in Costa Rica had his shipment delayed in Miami in summer so it staged the material. But since then the same customer has had quite a few orders all arrived perfectly once I helped him get shipping via UPS.