We are Finally getting to a stage where we are making molds of our fender flares. I was curious on everyones input.
We would like to know where the best spot to place our resin inlet and our vacuum inlet along with any resin / vacuum flow lines.
As long as you have multiples of both you will likely be fine. If it was me using conventional infusion materials and assuming you’re taking a mould off that part in the picture, I would place an inlet line at the lower left and the lower right of the wheel with a vac line along the top. This could also be switched but I would imagine it would be easier to get the resin flowing around that tight flare at the rear of the wheel with this method if the part is to be infused flat
How far around the front of the car does the fender go?
I was thinking the opposite of findhan. Inject across the top and vac at the bottom on either side of the wheel. The flow should run fairly even to the wheel opening and then each end will have it’s own vac to pull down to the bottom of the fender. Going the other way, the resin may flow up the sides to the top before crossing and meeting at the top of the wheel opening. Just a guess, it could work either way.
Yes we will be pulling our mold from this plug hopefully this weekend. the rear scoop on the fender is about 8 inches deep. and the front of the fender does not wrap around at all. where the flare stops is what we got.
Thank you very much for the useful information!
Should we run any sort of spiral flow line around it anywhere?
Also if it matters we are using a enkafusion flow media
Yeah could do it that way too but I was just thinking when you pull a mould off that fender to do the infusion on, it will be inverted so putting resin in the top, the flow would have to travel up a vertical surface at the change of profile at the back of the wheel instead of down the vertical surface which should be faster
The “direction” of flow in my previous post was more just for descriptive information. I figured the mold would be set down in a more horizontal position.
As for setting up the flow media, I would run the Enka across the “top” stopping a few inches short of the front and back of the fender. Since the bottom vac points are fairly narrow, I don’t think you’d need any spiral to convey vac across the end.