I appologize if its been covered ad nauseum, but I have a question about using intensifiers in an infusion. There are a few small areas of the mold that I’ve been fighting with (first) where I get bridging pretty frequently. If I made an intensifier (I’ve got some two part silicone I was thinking about using for this), can I put it inside the vacuum bag on top of the flow media or will it potentially stop the resin from flowing through properly?
Placing it atop the flow media or against the vac bag should work fine as long as the durometer/softness of the silicone doesn’t allow it to pull down into the flow media and suffocate resin flow any.
In some case…a heavy sand bag on the outside of the bag and sitting atop the caul plate helps additionally.
Engineering the mold better to facilitate the shape is often where I tend to go.
I have every intention to redesign this mold, one more time, but I figure since I put all the effort into making it, I should at least use it to practice and learn about infusion. Who knows, if I can get a good enough part out of it, maybe I won’t need to remake it afterall! I’m afraid that the issue is the complexity of curves in the area as the mold was pulled from an injection molded part which I am trying to replace with a composite one so I can’t really make too much of a change to the areas.
Thank you.
I feel your need to USE the mold. We’ve all felt it. And your right in trying to learn further from this current design. Most of us with no formal composite education aside from experience manged this way.
^^ Excellent advise up top from WW, silicone is the ideal choice for “in-bag” intensifiers, even with a high shore hardness they can seemingly cut the flow down a bit so be mindful and test away.