so I have been playing around with crappy old poly resin for quite a while with reasonable success and decided that I should get some VER to try it out. I bought some from comp canada and have been trying to use it to make some parts. The thing is, the VER does not want to cure very well. My garage is cold considering it is the winter but my polyester parts will cure, just not the ver. I tried to make a hot-box and we will see how that goes. I have been using VER with MEPK hardener (same as for poly) with some pigment. One of the peices I have made dried on the top but when I peeled it up, it was extremely flexible and was still sticky on the bottom. It has been curing for a few days as well. Any Ideas?
did you get the durakane m411 stuff??
I use that and have no problems with it. My shop is heated though and I try to keep it to about 70deg
what type of laminate are you doing?
Do you buy the Derakane promoted? When I used to use Derakane I had to add Cobalt and DMA before mixing in the MEKP. Even unpromoted the resin would only have a shelf life of about 6 months and would go gummy and unuseable. Derakane is good for making high temp moulds,though.
I made a part a few months back using VER and it had a difficult time curing aswell, codl temps in the garage. I added extra MEK and used a hairdryer to give it some heat, it cured a bit with the added heat but then I just left it for about a week or so in the Garage and it seemed to cure even at something like 2 celcius…
yes I am using the derakane and am not sure if it is promoted or not. The problem may just be due to the cold weather since one part has cured sufficiently over a few days in the hot box. Thanks for the help. Just picked up a fridge vac pump today so I should be finally using something better than crappy hand lay-up!
If your hand lay ups are “crappy” then its down to the skills of the person doing them, not the process.
Seems to me lots of people want to go on to RTM processes, before mastering the basics of hand laminating, and having little grasp of the basics makes RTM a lot more difficult!
I realize that hand lay-up can be a good process but I find it extremely frusterating and hard to fit even light fiberglass into complex corners to create a mold. It quite simply will not stay in the right spot. I have no problem creating simple or reasonably complex items, just not those with complex or sudden curves.