reuseable vac bag

I’ve used a smooth on product before, I wasn’t entirely happy with it and ended up reverting to traditional bagging due to scheduling crunch. I wish I had the time to fiddle with the system and perfect it. I had problems with the bag sealing on the flange as it was intended too. Very attractive being able re-use bags and eliminating sealant tape. I brushed mine on.

My colleague just played with a bag made using the directions of the supplier. He was not able to get a vacuum, unless he called in 10 people to press down the edges. (his part was 2x2 ft…)

With the smooth-on?

Try stabond Corporation they have spray silicone …you can use 18 binks pray gun

is another different kind of silicone, it must be dissolved in solvent

The piece (A-Pillars w/speaker pod for my 03 Jeep Wrangler) I was working on had a few 90 degree bends on it and a few odd-shaped pockets so I was getting voids. I saw where someone used latex to create a vac bag, so I printed off my trusty Hobby Lobby coupon and went and spent $10 on a 16 oz can of latex. I painted about 6 layers on the mold and got my form, let it cure for a few days then peeled it off. Then I used some semi-sticky roof flashing butyl tape (from Home Depot), taped off my edges, laid out some fiberglass cloth with some PE resin and some peel ply and applied a vacuum.

At 28’ish inches, it did a great job of compacting my materials, held vacuum and I got a nice finished product and the latex peeled right off and is reusable. Definitely something I’ll remember for later.

Finished product (after joining the split mold and some finishing…you can see some of the 90-degree bends on the driver’s side:

DO you know any good method for sealing silicone bag at the edges and making good resin flow for infusion ?

I have possibility to test silicone but im not sure how to build seal channel and resin channel. Anyone here is after silicone bag trials?

Resin channels: use omega profiles
Seal: during production of the silicone bag, apply flash tape sticky side up on the perimeter (stick it down on double sided tape). This will adhere. The flash tape surface can be used for using regular sealant tape.

Resin channels: ok omega profile…but what kind of? it must be something which will not be flaten by pressure and something which resin wont stick to.

Vacuum:
Herman , this might be good idea but my dictionary dont let me know what is flash tape?

…apart from that I saw on some smooth-on company that they create with some seal a special channel but its not shown on video what is next… and where to apply vacuum?!

It has been awhile since I have been on here, but I do have great experience with nearly every type of reusable bag in the industry. I could get into the chemistry of the particular cure materials used, but will spare the details. In my industry experience, there are two major classifications of reusable bags. What I would call roll materials and mix materials. Airtech and Mosite Rubber company are the two primary contributers to the roll material category. Simply get the material, cut it to fit, reuse it. Some roll material comes in a staged cure condition and can be formed over the contours of the mold then cured out completely giving you a perfect fitting “rolled material” bag. The other category is my favorite. I am going to name drop here for the sake of people wanting further research. SWORL, Smooth-On, Vacuspray, Wacker. There are many others, these are just the ones that I have a great deal of use with. Of these 4, Smooth-on will be the cheapest on just the material. The others are quite expensive initially. My personal favorite is SWORL. Some of you have seen my other posts on this material in the past. I personally own a machine to spray and use this material in aerostructure production every day. There are many benefits to each type, but the most critical to me is repairability. SWORL is the only one that can be repaired simply by squirting some more material out over the hole and waiting till cured. It will “stick” to itself. I can answer most of your questions on this subject.

Just before Long Beach SAMPE I was in contact with the owner of SWORL and we talked about using a set of my molds to use as example during the show. I set up a friend to gain access to my shop while I was gone to deliver them , then I never heard back from them.
So , I went with Wackers SIlicone system.(after I got over their name).

So far ,so good !

Worldwealth, I have had a similar instance with the same person, but the sales person that I use is fantastic. Rod Bernett is his name. I just have had the best luck and all around good experience with their materials.