How important is it to use resin catch pot during vacuum infusion? What are the alternatives ?
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Depends on your skills and how to. I don’t use it. U can use MTI hose or u can cut your resin feed ad the wright time with the wright brakezone.
I would never run without a catch pot. It is too much risk to the vacuum pump, and when you’re using a $4000 Vacmobile from VABS you make sure it is protected. It is not just liquid resin that risks the pump but vapour and small droplets too. A simple catch pot will set you back a few hundred dollars vs a pump in the thousands.
As Michiel said a good setup should prevent excess resin, but a catch pot is for insurance. You might be a good driver but you still wear your safety belt and get a car with airbags.
Any instructions for a home made resin catch?
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Pretty simple, it’s just a reservoir. Make it using a tube rather than flat sheet so it’s stronger. I’d go for 3mm steel or 5mm aly. Weld a piece of flat sheet on the bottom, and get a piece of 25mm thick acrylic or ideally polycarbonate as a lid, and a sheet of neoprene rubber for a seal. Drill and tap holes for fittings and away you go!
Or go for a pvc tube with a cap on each side (one can be a screw cap). You now have a catchpot for less then $10 the only thing you don’t have is a clear top but you don’t need that at all.
That’s what I did for my first catch pot. A short length of 4" PVC with two end caps, and I just drilled out two holes for ports which I glued in with plenty of epoxy to seal them up. Didn’t even tap them in. It’s not ‘reusable’ in the sense that if it fills up with resin you won’t be able to clean it out, but that doesn’t matter because a) it’s cheap enough to be disposable and b) there is a huge volume in there so it’s going to take some effort to fill it up
I have bought a cheap pressure spray pot and modified it with adding a vag gauge and inlet gate valve in the lid.
The pots are strong and already has a nice clamping lid with ready threaded holes for fittings.
Several available on eBay. Fairly inexpensive
Jeez you’re brave using glass.
Could you not just use a small degassing chamber and remove the gauge for the inlet and the normal one for the outlet.
that is if you wanted to buy one of course, or you could use the same principles to build one.
never had a problem with normal average glass jar. well if ur clumsy than u shud use steel pot 
I have imploded a PVC pipe Degas chamber. I was standing beside it. Kept finding shards of pipe around the workshop for months after.
I imploded a 5mm thick 20L steel stockpot that I tried to use as a degassing chamber. Happened at about half vacuum too.
hey hanaldo, it mite be fault in the pot? how big is ur vacuum pump?
i reckon u shud start using prepreg, no more catch pots and dealing with resins etc
It probably was, I just wouldn’t risk doing the same thing with glass! Pump is nothing special, just some Chinese rotor vane. Pulls down to 5pa at 2.2cfm.
I do use pre-pregs occasionally, but I’m limited with the size of my oven so only use it for small things. I’m currently planning on building a bigger oven, thing is I am usually building larger parts for motorsports like fenders, bonnets, etc. The increased price of a pre-preg bonnet vs the quality of an infused bonnet just isn’t really worth it. Plus I like to be able to keep things in stock, I try not to buy things with a short shelf-life.
fair point hanaldo, mind u our prepregs shelf life 4-6 weeks and 12 months freezer life. curing range 80-150 degrees celcius.
we use mason jars. like the kind used for pickling stuff. we get a dozen at the grocery store for about $10. we used to use the lids that came with them, just drilled holes the right size for the tubes then vacuum taped around the tubes where they go thru the lid. we upgraded now and i made some fancy circles out of 3/4" clear acrylic with holes drilled in those, and some brass barbed fittings that the tubing fits snugly INSIDE of. vac-tape around the seam of the barbed fitting and the tube. made gaskets out of sheets of latex or silicon, either works well.
we dont bother trying to keep the pots clean we just dump them after each shot, wipe the rim, and shoot again. after a while they fill up. ours look kinda cool because we tint all of our resin, so theres lots of layers of colors. anyways after the jar is full we just throw it out and grab a new one. for under a dollar each and lasting hundreds of shots… i dont know how it could be cheaper than that.
of course over the long term, like… years, the proper ready-made vacuum catch-pots available for purchase will have a better return on investment because it can potentially be used indefinitely if taken care of. at our shop, they guys dont take care of much of anything so the least valuable the things are that they touch everyday the better.
wow that got long winded haha
-david