Raka Epoxy

[kyle@raka.com]

Good afternoon everyone, I just wanted to ask a few simple questions, but first some background information from me.
My name is Kyle and I do infact work at Raka, Inc. I am in charge of all the marketing and basic public relations.
My question to you all is,
How do you rate Raka Epoxy for your projects? Is the price competitve enough? Are you finding enough time to work with the epoxy? If your interested in a longer pot life what ideally would you want?

The last one is to help us in Research and Development. We are working on some longer pot life mixtures that will help people in the higher temps to have enough time to work. Also for people that want to do a boat like a big catermeran in 1 full section at a time.

If you have bad experiances with us please let me know I would like to have as much information (good or bad) so we can keep the customers happy or make them happy again.

Thank you for your help it is much appricated.

Kyle Dunn
Raka, Inc
www.Raka.com for catalog information.

A formulation for high humidity would be a real advantage.

Longer pot life is less of a concern.

Regards
Richard

[kyle@raka.com]

Richard,
Thanks for replying we always like hearing from our customers. As far as your humidity request our 350non-blush hardener is actually a high humidity formulation. Unlike some competitors we don't put all of the information online in reguards of what can be tolerated. It would be like saying hey buy our car it's garenteed to got atleast 60mph. We have actully just got into final testing phase of a new 350. On the new stuff compaired to the old stuff it has a longer pot life (now 40 mins to old 30mins) and is even more blush free then the 350(in our test we made 3oz "hocky pucks"). We noticed a slight yellow tint around the edge of the 350 old, but the new 350 is just as clear as a piece of glass that you would put into your home.

I hope that give you some more knowledge on our products.
Thanks for reccomending us in another thread.(I found this site through lots of forum searchs with people using our products.)

Kyle Dunn

[CatBuilder]

I have to second Richard's comment. My project will involve high humidity or expensive air conditioners. I'd like to have an epoxy that works well in those conditions.

[kyle@raka.com]

Catbuilder, I have replied to your email. Also I would agree with what your both saying. Our warehouse is located in southeast Florida. We got a thermomiter and humidity meter recently and I noticed it was up above 80% humidity today. We do some projects in the warehouse with those kind of tempuratures and humidity and our epoxy comes out great. I will have to see about getting some of the pictures up on the website to show you all.

All questions or comments will be answered. If you had a bad experiance or a great one we want to know. We don't say it much, because our actions speak for themselves, but we do what's right for the customer we treat everyone how we expect to be treated. If there's a problem we will work on making it right and making as many people happy as we can.

Thanks to everyone that is contributing to the bettering of our product for you, the customer.

Kyle Dunn

Originally Posted by CatBuilder

My project will involve high humidity or expensive air conditioners. I'd like to have an epoxy that works well in those conditions.

According to Kyle´s comment above it seems you could save several 1000 $$$
And do you believe me now, that you must not do all the drama with AC ???
I told you right from the beginning, you must not play with too much energy consuming gimmicks, go for the right EP formulation (hardener) instead.

Thanks Kyle,

did you run tests above 80% as well? And are you going to publish some of the results here?

Regards
Richard

[kyle@raka.com]

Here is some of the results of our test with the high humidity hardeners.

Here's a few pictures of the old 350 we used for a project. Raka Epoxy Projects

Right now the newest epoxies are still in our testing phase the should be ready by the end of the month.

Hope that looks good for you all.

Thanks for sharing.

Richard

[AndrewK]

Kyle, did your testing include laminate comparative data for laminations above and below 80% RH?

[kyle@raka.com]

On the test that we have done so far is the potlife inside the office at about 77f and 50% humidty. We did a lamination test of our new tropical hardener yesterday outside in the warehouse at 85f with 75-85% humidity and without doing the lamination properly we still needed a chisel and hammer to break it apart. In sections where the lamination was correct the wood would split about to layers deeps on the sheet of louan. I'm not sure what you mean by laminate comaparitive data of laminations. We are planning to test our product line throughly agenst our competitors this comeing week. We are working on doing real life sinario test so if anyone has some things they wanted tested let me know and we will see what we can do.

Kyle Dunn
Raka epoxy, fiberglass, and composite materials

[gonzo]

I think that testing adhesion on different wood species would be a good thing too. Oily or resinous woods sometimes create problems.

Originally Posted by gonzo

I think that testing adhesion on different wood species would be a good thing too. Oily or resinous woods sometimes create problems.

Oak and Teak, and some pines, the old drama, yes.

In addition to my mail correspondance with Kyle I would like to make some comments here.
It is of interest for all the community, therefore private mails may be nice for me, but what do the others gain.

A really meaningful test could be a comparison between the properties of a good "standard" formulation / hardener, call it the "best seller" in the program, and a high temp / high humudity formulation / hardener.

In both cases the test should be done in similar samples of wood / wood strips and wood / glass strips, due to the fact that these are the most common applications in our world.

A bending (brittleness) test and a compression (shear force) test would be fine.

After that one could additionally try to chisel the samples apart (in the zones where the strips were held inside the test arrangement, clamped).

Further comments?

Regards
Richard

[Landlubber]

Hi Kyle,

Nice that someone inside the epoxy game is brave enough to face the "opposition"...as stated above there are many definative tests that can be done, not one of the companies here has referred their info to outsiders, I certainly hope that some good comes out of it.

May I ask you a question....when repairing a grp product and epoxy has been used as the glue/filler, do you have a system that will allow polyester flowcoat to be used to finish off the job as per original.
I have been using vinylester resin as a tie layer and find that works, but wanted to know if there are any other alternatives please.

Ta, John

Originally Posted by Landlubber

Nice that someone inside the epoxy game is brave enough to face the "opposition"...

Have fully to concur!

And I would not go ahead if I would feel any cheap advertisement behind the action!

But this seems to be one of the very rare cases when the industry enjoys the direct contact, and we should treat it accordingly.

[AndrewK]

Kyle, boat building standards such as Australian and DNV require you to maintain the workshop temperature above 18'C (65'F) and below 80% RH during lamination.
In case of your non blushing 350 hardener if you want to claim that it can be used in humidity levels above 80% you would need to make up a set of laminates in high humidity say 85+ %, another set in below 65%. In each case you need to have your glass equilibrate to the RH first and after the laminates have gelled you need to have both sets cure at the same temperature. When fully cured do flexural and interlamina sheer tests as a minimum, these tests need to be ASTM or ISO to be conclusive.

Cheers
Andrew