I’m just curious for those who do vacuum infusion, do you always chose this method or do you switch?
From my understanding, its seems like from highest quality process to lowest it goes, infusion, bagging, wet lay up. So if youre already set up for Infusion, would you really ever vacuum bag something or do a wet lay up instead? what/why?
so many factors will help you decide between those 3, many shops do all 3+ methods as it gives you more flexibility. Its a balance between cost, time, quality and customer requirements. Infusion will give you the best quality laminate between those 3 processes
Do you have any examples when you would use each method for what project?
It is not a clear line. Basicly the demands on the part determines the production method.
For very small parts with low demands, hand layup is quick and simple.
For very large parts I would not do without infusion.
Wet bagging is something I try to avoid. No real advantage in labour or laminate quality. Does pop out lighter parts than hand layup though.
I often do vacuum bagged wet-layups on smaller simple parts because I can do them faster and cheaper than an infused part. I use a simple bag system so I can eliminate tacky tape, flow media, running all the porting, etc. Hollow structures can be done by infusion but they can be very awkward to do in one shot. Removing the guts from a infused one-shot hollow structure can be cumbersome. In this situation a bladder assisted layup can be optimum. Some structures just don’t need to be fully optimized so a simple hand layup can really cheap and fast.