I was wondering what professionals use to predict vacuum infusion flow patterns. In the near future I’m going to be doing some large scale layups for some clubs on campus and its crucial that the layup takes only one or two attempts. With a non existent budget wasting composite materials through trial and error will bankrupt any club.
Thanks in advance!
There are a few options for flow simulation, but I think it’s going to be out of the budget of school clubs.
Let me know if I can help. With proper flow media and resin/vacuum line locations, there shouldn’t be a problem getting good results on the first try.
I was hoping that some of those companies would take it easy on the price for students since we don’t turn a profit. Do you have any recommendations?
Help is always welcome but the biggest problem is that multiple clubs need help. And then once those clubs get professional results other clubs will get jealous and start asking. I don’t want to overburden anyone that is doing us favors, especially since you guys have helped so much already.
If issues come up I’ll definitely ask but I also want to be sure it’s sustainable help and that I’m not just using you!
solidworks has a flow simulator. it’s meant for injection molding simulations, but i’m sure it would give you a fairly accurate simulation for infusion as well. you can also get student versions of solidworks, not sure about plug-ins like flow works though.
I’ll have to look into it then. I have the student version of Solidworks but I haven’t checked out the plugins. Tet wasn’t kidding about the price. I got a trial version of RTMWorx but the full license costs 24,000 euros, which is about double the cost of my yearly tuition.
I don’t really have any experience with infusion parts, but I have access to and some experience with the solidworks moldflow analysis program through my school. I might be able to run some drawings to see what it spits out if you want. I’m not sure how accurate they will be, however, since injection molding plastic has a couple of issues that I would expect to be unimportant in infusing epoxy (for example, the program accommodating for weld lines).
I’ll definitely be asking you once I have actual drawings of the parts I’ll be making. I’m going to be infusing a nose cone for a small one seater formula style vehicle. I’m still waiting on all the other teams to design the guts of the vehicle before I’m able to come up with a final design. How difficult is moldflow to use?
it’s pretty easy, however modeling it in such a way as to replicate infusion might take a little trial and error.
Talk to the guys at www.polyworx.com. Their software is made specifically for resin infusion, and more importantly, it works…
I got a trial but it’s way too expensive for me. His pricing is about 5000 euros for one job.
To add to my reply,
I’m glad to hear it works. From what I’ve seen it looks simple enough. But I understand what Tet says, it’s not cheap software and it’s out of a college club’s range. However it does come with a trial so once I’m able to get my geometry finalized I’ll activate the trial and see if I can get quick results from it.
IMHO, polyworks software and services is pure robbery, there are many professionals out there who have made more complex software or charge their services within reasonable limits but polyworks is definitely not one of them
It is not even worth to talk to them all they want is your money and fast regardless of the amount of work involved, I wanted to have a prediction for the infusion of a hull and despite me giving all the geometry in 3D just for running their software for my project ( less than 2 hours job according to them ) they wanted 8.000 euros
when someone wants to be assaulted and striped of the wallet there are simpler ways: just walk alone late at night in dangerous neighbourhoods …
Well that’s good to hear that prices are more reasonable than that. I was surprised that infusion software costs more than solidworks, mastercam and a decent cnc machine combined.
It is all about the expected customer base. Solidworx is a program that you can sell to anyone. RTMWorx is not. These guys are up to their neck in work (and are hiring…)
JIGGER, how is your project coming along?
Have a look to “myRTM” software ;it’s free and it can be interesting for a basic class training.
I downloaded it yesterday, and I took a quick look in the manual. For what I read of it, the permeability (hence the speed of the resin) is only defined as Vf, which generates unpredictable results to say at the least. You really need to calculate (test) the permeability. I guess that is also where they have their problems with predicting fill time.
Still, a nice find, and as the software is GNU based and still in development, it can become a big thing.