What Infusion Resin Do You Use??

I got some bad news today. The MAS infusion resin doesn't work in temperatures below 75F (23.8C). This is the infusion resin I had been using. I had bugged them again and again to tell me how much accelerator to use at varying temperatures (from ambient to 100F to 40F), but they never did answer me. I finally found out today after pressing them to the wall on it.

I nearly lost my damn hull, but got very lucky that the temperatures got up to 80F today. It is curing, finally, now 48 hours after the infusion. Scary stuff!

I have beams to infuse, another hull to infuse the outside of and the bridgedeck, deckhouse and such to still infuse.

I need to find an infusion resin that has documentation and will cure from 40F to 100F using different hardeners, or a full spectrum accelerator additive or whatever, but it has to be useable from 40F to 100F

Does anyone know what infusion resin (viscosity of 200 cps or so) I can use?

 

Don't you have any heater around? I have to warm up my shop all the time to get West Standard to kick in.. that means 7deg Celsius
ps and in these temperatures I can only dream about infusion..

 

I guess I have to cancel this thread.

My technical contact at MAS had things wrong, apparently. He was (apparently) thinking about viscosity and fluid flow when suggesting a minimum temperature of 75 (23.8). I was asking about minimum cure temperatures.

I will updated this thread as soon as I have some definitive information from MAS on this.

Teddy: A heater won't really work. My shop is 10m x 20m (30 x 60) and the boat takes the whole shop up. The part that was being infused that didn't cure fast enough was the full length of the hull. It was the hull!

 

Today was perfect weather here. It didn't get warm enough for a good cure today where you are?

 

Just barely. They were suggesting 75-80 as the min temperature, so that's just where we made it today. It did cure, but it didn't cure between a couple days ago and now. It should cure the same day, basically.

 

My shop is 5 x 12 + 6 x 6 m (16 x 40 + 20 x 20) isolated 10 cm and I warm the whole shop. With a wood stowe burning some 4kg wood per hour I have 20C above outside temp.
If crows aren't flying in you should get some 6C higher temp with a single 6kw heater in your shop. As I understand it's only temporarily during night and morning hours when doing infusion?

 

the biggest glass pool manufacturer in Australia will only work at night as its too hot in the day and the resin cures too fast .......
Makes you think .....

 

40 degrees and 200 cps: forget it.

Polyester needs 15 degrees C minimum (with peroxide curing systems)

Epoxy will cure, even at low temperatures, but it will be slow to very slow / ultra slow. Thinning epoxy to get it to infusion specs is tough, so if you want to infuse, try and keep the temperature up.

The usual trick is to infuse at moderate temperatures, say 20-25 degrees, then ramp up the temperature when the infusion is finished. (to say 35-45 degrees, all celcius). This does cost energy. (do you have heater rentals over there, like Andrews-Sykes)

 

I read of an infusion system that was at first thought, bizarre. A very clever, quirky, profane, boat builder named Rob White (now deceased) used the following scheme.......
Heat the shop up to a bitchin hot temperature, Let the temp stay hot for a time interval that allows the wood to get to near ambient temp. Now put the epoxy on the surfaces to be infused. Soon therafter open all the windows and doors and turn on the air conditioner. What you are trying to do is reduce the wood temperature before the epoxy sets. The epoxy gets sucked deeply into the permeable wood by virtue of the temp differentials.

I have tried this on a small scale (model building) and it works better than it sounds. This may not be practical on a large boat but might be fine for dinghys or some of the sub assemblies.

 

I should update this thread.

I pressed MAS on this issue and they finally admitted it can work at lower temperatures with added accelerator.

The support guy (Tony) said he'd give me a little bit of data on varying the accelerator to account for temperature differences.

That was 2-3 weeks ago. MAS epoxy support sucks. I wouldn't use them again.

System Three and West System far outshine MAS in support.

 

I'd look into SP Gurit. Great customer service and very knowledgeable. Other companies cant guarantee that Poly/vinyl ester will stick to their epoxies, while Gurit will stand behind that claim (within reason)

 

You can gain a huge amount of know how simply by doing your own exsperimentation with temeratures and what ever . Its a whole deal when talking tempratures its not just having warm resin but the moulds and everything else that has any contact with the mould everything need to be at the same temprature plus its surrounding area !
Working in a controlled enviroment is heaven and everything is predictable. No problems! everything happens when its surposed to and does what its meant to do and on time .

 

Agreed. Gurit makes great stuff, when they make it. Still waiting on a batch of core cell ordered in November.

Tunnels, i'd love climate control. I'd also love to have the time to experiment. This is a one off that has to get launched ASAP, so i can have an income again. Not enough time. I think mas, like all other epoxy vendors, should show me cure times at different temperatures. They just give you one temp and say to put between 30% and as low as 10% accelerator in the hardener. Those are the instructions. Every other company gives you temperature ranges.

 

Climate controll is not that hard just tent the parts you are working on and have enough room to work and keep all you resins etc in under that same tent . If you have failures in the future from making all kinds a chemical witchs brews who you gone call ?? who you going to blame ?? whos gonna be at fault ?? . All and any resins dont like moisture or the cold !!
Building boats to survey standards has taught me a lot and given me a greater appreciation of doing things properly the first time and never having to spend sleepless nights having to worry is it or isnt it . Flying by the seat of you pants is not a good way to go . I hope you're going sailing alone !!

 

That's a stupid post. There are very few boats built in a NASA clean room. My boat is just fine.
I'd be more nervous boarding one of your polyester chopper gun specials than my professionally designed core cell and epoxy boat.

Tent? I'm in a building that has no heat since I'm just about in the tropics. I have air conditioning. You love to try to spread fear on this forum and convince people they will die and cannot build quality boats. Fact is, once you master a few skills, building a boat is easy. Just takes a long time.

Lastly, you can't have a mas epoxy failure by using their 3 part infusion epoxy system as instructed. Duh. Why do you keep posting in my infusion theads if you have no experience using infusion products such as mas epoxy and raptor staples?