Hey all.
I need some advice. A company asked me if i can produce 100 pairs of carbon fiber shinguards a month. I told then the carbon fiber process is slow and not good for high production parts, so they lower to 50 pairs/month. Can i consider using an aluminium mold? that allow me to pull at least 10 a day? i will use infusion method.
Thanks in advance to all who help me.
Cheers
if i were you i would make a mold for multiple pairs so i could make 5-10 of these at the same time.
But can i use aluminium? Thats the idea jimff1 
Yes ofcourse you can consider an aluminium mold, but I can’t see your budget, ect. 10 a day with infusion with one mold, good luck with that. You can also make more polyester or epoxy molds so you can infuse more at ones. The molds have to be perfect then otherwise you can’t pull much good parts.
Michiel 10 a day with one aluminium mold, is that so hard?
By the way, i always had this question, how i make a polyester mold from a CAD file?
If you can get 2 or 3 molds for each pair of shin guards (I’m assuming a set is made in a single bagging shot) then I can see 50 a month happening. that’s only 2.5 every working day so that is definitely doable. I would get a plug made out of aluminum and then a couple of FG molds off of that plug for production.
Ten a day with one mold with RT curing infusion resins is no where close to possible… You need at least a 5 hour cure cycle in an elevated temperature environment before you can demold any of the resin systems I know of.
Lets see if you guys understand my point. I made this picture, the idea basically is this. With a mold like this i can pull at least 5 pairs a day. Ive got a oven were i can cure my parts.
https://meocloud.pt/link/2976abed-8de2-4f00-aa0e-26151f563226/alum.jpg/
You could easily make 100 per month with good tooling and enough molds.
whats your budget? You could also use composite tooling rather than aluminum. These parts are fairly simple and the laypu would be fast.
For a serial production I would use heated moulds. Depending on the budget and how long you have to produce the parts you have to decide if you use aluminium or cf moulds.
The Aluminium mould can be heated and cooled by water, the cf moulds can be heated electrical.
You can use electrical elements in your CNC’d Aluminium moulds as I have for 15yrs. now using pre-preg with no problems,good temp. control etc.
Good Luck.
The company pays me 4000 usd only for the mold. If cost more ive to pay myself the rest.
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CNC Aluminium master plug and cf moulds. You can heat them quit simple with the carbon and a cheap PID controller. Not perfect but good enough for what you plan to do.
Heated aluminium (and prepregs) would be my choice for high production.
Aluminium moulds can take much, hundreds, thousands of pulls. Importand are surface quality and release agent, as with every mould.
But a polyester mould for 10 parts or something can take a few hundred pulls too with adequate care. Thats a lot of parts. pull 2 from a master and you have a spare if one breaks down.A bit more work, but a lot cheaper in material costs. Cad drawing to polyester mould requires some manufacturing offcourse. For small parts there are more than enough cnc machine shops nearby probably. Let them mill a master from tooling board, mdf, epoxy or polyester paste, etc. Finish it of with a paint system(like duratec, or a 2k PU paint.) and pull off a mould.
The other way is to create some templates, stations, and form it yourself from a piece of foam, wood, etc. Requires a lot of skill to beat the CNC machine in speed and precision, if you use a slow and inaccurate CNC…
Thank you for all very useful information. I would like to learn Prepeg but not for now, i don’t have enough room for more stuff. Wood cnc plug sounds cheaper and interesting way to make the molds. I will do some research. Get some quotes for all this ideias you guys gave me. Thank you very much, always love to learn with the experts
