I tested pieces with reninfusion 8604. I made tests on waxed and frekote treated epoxy and per tooling surfaces. After releasing, the surfaces were all left matte. Is this normal? Is there a release that keeps the surface gloss?
Buffing between releases and reapplying release agents every time would suck.
i didn’t actually infuse the first round of tests. I just wet layed up on the surface. I did a second test under vacuum keeping the resin from contacting air while curing, with good results. Contacting air while curing may cause some reaction in the resin and make it more corrosive or something.
Had the same issue with semi perm, less so with wax, but its not really an issue.
If your using semi perm, just wipe the mold with a clean “t-shirt” material cloth. Even if you have to recoat the mold with semi perm it only takes 5 seconds to re-apply (or atleast the stuff I use does).
Semi perms come in many different “finishes”. I’ve had really good success with Frekote WOLO. After about 7 or 8 pulls it will start dulling a bit, but it’s easily reapplied. My molds are PER, tooling gel with Duratec high gloss additive, polished with Meguiar’s heavy coat cleaner and a 3m foam pad.
Here’s a link for the WOLO.
http://www.henkelna.com/cps/rde/xchg/henkel_us/hs.xsl/1554_USE_HTML.htm?countryCode=us&BU=ut&parentredDotUID=brands&redDotUID=0000000J6Y
Other than using this stuff, my most brilliant shines straight from the mold have come from using crappy PVA. ;o)
Hope this helps!!!
Which Frekote are you using? Some are made to leave a matte finish.
its nc-770. I popped out parts with it before, and I know that it leaves a bit of a matte finish. This was more than usual. It also happened with a waxed surface. With both releases doing in a test wet lay up it left the mold and part far too matte. I have to do a proper infusion test still.
there was a definite reaction between the reninfusion and both per tooling and rencast surfaces. I hope I can fix the problem with better stiring of the components before using.
still getting some kind of a reaction.
It’s probably the epoxy… that RenInfusion is harsh stuff. It’s good but man… it ate thru my stretchlon 200 bag film. It literally laminated part of the bag to the composite where the peel ply moved and carbon was infusing. Ate right thru the darn bag in a ton of places. :eek:
Also with RenInfusion 8604 do NOT wait more than 24 hours to demold the part and remove the peel ply. It will bond the peel ply to the part.
I would just use wax with that epoxy. What i was thinking earlier in my above post is Frekote has a mold prep liquid to be applied before the NC700 is applied. But screw it… just wax the mold in my opinion.
I’m doing more tests with more wax coats, i’m using the meguir’s now i was using another brand earlier.
So how are your parts coming out? Does it mess with your molds?
The reninfusion doesn’t hurt my molds at all. In fact my molds come out cleaner after each pull using reninfusion and just mold wax.
what epoxy are you using for the mold surface?
I did tests with an epoxy surface coat and meguir’s wax, it was much much better than polyester and frekote. It’s funny that the manufacturer suggests using frekote.
I mix my own epoxy surface coat that is used for mold making. It’s Jgreer epoxy 300-21 but i add stuff to make it more durable.