Infusion for molds designed as open molds?

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#1

I’d like to changeover from hand lam to infusing these parts. My wife & neighbors (and me) are about fed up with the doom stink of the PER from doing them as open mold…

I don’t want to modify the molds, as I only have about 10 sets to make.

My thought is to coat the back sides of the molds with something like an undercoating to cover up the sharp edges and then use or make a tube vac. bag to enclose the whole thing. There is a little run-off on each mold where I could probably fit the inlet/outlet stuff for the infusion.

My concern is that without a sealed off flange that the resin will want to go everywhere and not just into the FG. It seems to me that that shouldn’t be the case too much, but what do you think?

Pictures of said molds:

#2

what about wet lay up and vacuum bagging using epoxy resin? There is hardly any smell at all from epoxy.

The thing i see is those molds are not made for VARTM.

#3

Most definately they aren’t VARTM molds :P. I’ve done some real VARTM with proper molds. I was hoping that I could just cut the glass to fit the mold, put the peelply and flow media on top, and put the feed and exit at the very edges of the FG. Part of me thinks it should work, but the other part of me says ‘hmmmmm’

Maybe I’ll have to get some PER odor suppressor, or work in the middle of the night haha.

#4

Have the molds been used? Why weren’t they made with flanges in the first place? Just asking, as obviously it’s too late to do anything about it.
If you decide to infuse, and use an envelope bag, good luck. Be careful with the resin getting to the back side.
If doing wet lay up, it’ll be painfully slow. Possibly very smelly in the work area.

Keep us updated on how it goes.

#5

You can’t lay your resin or vac lines on top of the part being infused… you’ll have big time impressions showing thru the whole part. All vac spiral wrap should not touch the lay up. Just in my personal experience/opinion… your gonna have a huge mess and waste on your hands if you try to infuse using those molds.

Buy some epoxy resin and do a wet lay up then vacuum bag it.