What type of fiberglass (roven/stiched/mat) for infusion

Discussion in 'Fiberglass and Composite Boat Building' started by GringoJohn, May 8, 2012.

  1. GringoJohn
    Joined: Nov 2010
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    Location: Quepos Costa Rica

    GringoJohn Fish Slayer

    Going to do a corecell sanwiched deck for my boat. i've never done vacuum infusion, but I've watched a ton of videos and talked to quite a few people. I started off thinking about using kevlar, but I have pretty much gathered that the resin won't infuse well in the kevlar. So I am thinking about just going with glass, and was wondering what types of weaves (like roven, or stitched or mat ) would work. Pretty simple deck with just longest unsupported section just 3 feet. Anybody done this before, and have specific recommendations? I was thinking about using a flow medium under the corecell and doing it all at once. Any suggestions on that?

    I just bought a 7cfm JB industries pump, really excited about getting this started! Start building the table next week. I was thinking VE resin, maybe 5 percent styrene to help it infuse? Was hoping to get to a 4 foot by 8 foot sheet, making the run across the 4 foot section with additional feed in the middle (at least on the first run) in case it stops! Any thoughts! I posted on here a while back and got some great info, this is kind of a follow up as I have learned a bit since the first post. Thanks a ton!
     
  2. tunnels

    tunnels Previous Member

    Why infusion ????:?:
     
  3. GringoJohn
    Joined: Nov 2010
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    Location: Quepos Costa Rica

    GringoJohn Fish Slayer

    A couple of reasons, but the main idea is to keep the resin content low so the floor is lighter. I have done lots of wet layups, and it's just miserable brushing all the glass out, and then getting off the extra resin. The parts always end up with uneven thicknesses, and lots of extra weight from resin pools inside the mix. I was thinking to copy the way some of the high end boat builders are doing it, like world cat.

    Why not infusion?

    http://www.engineeringmotion.com/videos/1216/vacuum-infusion-fiberglass-hull
     
  4. GringoJohn
    Joined: Nov 2010
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    Location: Quepos Costa Rica

    GringoJohn Fish Slayer

    I mis typed when I asked the first question. The question I meant to ask is what type of weaves to use. i had someone tell me only to use stitched, but I am used to using roven fiberglass with mat. Will roven fiberglass with mat not let the resin move through it?
     
  5. tunnels

    tunnels Previous Member

    I been glassing for many many years and would never advise anyone to infuse anything ever !! you got completely the wrong impression of hand laminating glass . can make a better job by hand and the thing of saving of resin is not even worth thinking about !!On a big projects yes its a issue but small things its a no brainer and not worth the hassles !!. can be done laid and cleaned up and on with the next before you even get the bag sealed !!:p

    Its possible to make just as good a job hand laminiating as infussion . what you discribed of wetting out and poor looking lay up is your lack of technique . I never use a brush always use a paint roller either 4 or 6 inchs wide 90% of your wetting and rolling can be done with this roller . as for finish !,use peel ply every where . Its really nice to see and leaves a good finish ! The resin content when you use peel ply is very close to what you would get if you infused the same job .
    I watched part of the video !!
    Theres nothing in there that would inspire me to want to have anything to do with infusing a hull or any other part for that matter . the time and effort and the pile of extra materials involved and the waste at the end and time taken with a crowd of people to do the job !! then there clean up after the job before you carry on with the next phase is beyond thinking about so for a one off its a waste of time and effort !!.You might save a few cups of resin thats all !!. I have watched, seen and done infusion !! but after a while theres a drif back to the older lamination in a very high percentage of cases when the rubbish man is the only one making money taking away the crap of hoses plastic and all the other list of unuseables . Sorry it has to improve a lot to make it work for me to use more than 3 times !! the chances of things going wrong are way to high for me !!!
     
  6. afteryou
    Joined: May 2012
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    Location: Southeast Alaska

    afteryou Junior Member

    Tunnels is 100% correct on this if you have not done infusion before it will not be worth the time. Spend a few more minutes with the lam roller and go slow wetting out. you should not have any excess resin in a flat pannel. i have done
    both and there is a lot that can go wrong with infusion.
    i would not attempt to do it without first hand guidance
    Sorry i would be more helpfull but i am typing this
    on my phone. way more frustrating than hand layup
     
  7. GringoJohn
    Joined: Nov 2010
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    Location: Quepos Costa Rica

    GringoJohn Fish Slayer

    Yeah, but it's more like one of those fun projects. I figure it might not be the optimal way to do things, but it would be fun to try. Do you guys recommending vacuum bagging then?

    If I were to do the infusing, what type of weave would be best for me?

    This is kind of the small scale, I wanted to get a feel of how to do it. Then, if everything went well, I have a 26 foot mold and it would be fun to try to infuse that, but I want to get started with something easier first... I don't see how it would be possible to do a foam cored hull without vacuum infusing. It would just take too long to wet everything down, and get the foam to stick down. Maybe I'm wrong here, probably, either way, it's more of a fun thing than a serious thing.... Kind of an offseason project. It would make for a neat video as well, especially if it doesn't work :)
     
  8. afteryou
    Joined: May 2012
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    Location: Southeast Alaska

    afteryou Junior Member

    If you are doing it to learn than by all means go
    for it as long as you can afford to do it twice.
    vacuum bagging works good but i think it would be
    unnecessary. i strongly urge you to find someone to
    Come and help you set up. When i learned infusion the boss hired
    a guy from the lower 48 to teach us how to do it and
    we still ended with a twenty gallon hockey puck and a half
    infused hull
     
  9. tunnels

    tunnels Previous Member

    sucky sucky ?????

    Get to know and understand the basics !!
    What are you trying to do when you say bagging ?
    bagging core to a skins?
    bagging the skin its self ?
    or bagging the whole lot ??
    Bagging core is logical for me and is the only way to make sure its stuck 100% every where !!,
    but theres a few things there you need to understand as well .
    Are you bagging as just to hold the core in possition till the resin or coreboand or what ever you get to use goes hard ?
    or are you wanting to suck the living daylights out of it and every last drop of resin ??
    Sucking skins and compressing glass is almost pointless .
    if the skin is laid and rolled and peel plyed then less than 1/4 a cup of resin maybe is about all you'd get out of it !, So is all that effort of sucky sucky really worth worrying over ?
    core yes !!
    ,Glass no!!
    Again have you ever done any vacumn bagging before ??
    how much pressure do you need to do what you want to do ??
    Oh yes there are limits to what is required and is needed !! and there is a differance
    Its not just slap on a bag and suck to the max and walk away and leave it because you might be unpleasently surprised when you take the bag off !!
    and be left wondering why the hell did that happen????? :eek:
     
  10. tunnels

    tunnels Previous Member

    I love your discription of the 20 gallon hocky puck !!:D
    Yes we are always seeing the wonderful side of infussion but never the problems and the failures and the bins full of rejects !! . I had a friend in nz worked for a company and they infused a huge supper yacht hull . It sent him over the edge the whole job was so over whelming he was a soggy mess at the end of it and had to have 3 months off work . Norm came and worked with me a while later and was never the same person ever again . I was working doing a totally unrelated job of laying big bamboo T and G floors at the time.
    yes i have more than 2 trades and non of them are related to each other !. Its want keeps me sane !:p
     
  11. CatBuilder

    CatBuilder Previous Member

    Infusion will work with anything, though the mat will add more weight to your project than a hand layup would.

    The rein flows through the flow media first and the glass wets out about a mm behind it. All manner of fabric will wet out.

    If this is truly a 4x8 piece, it would be much faster to hand laminate. However, if you are just looking to play with infusion, go right ahead. Just know it's not the ideal way in this case.
     
  12. GringoJohn
    Joined: Nov 2010
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    Location: Quepos Costa Rica

    GringoJohn Fish Slayer

    I don't know exactly what the goal is, there are tons of molds here, and the long term goal would be to bag a whole boat and infuse the whole thing. The workers here are sloppy though on the hand layup, and when they do a boat it comes out really heavy and not well made. But the initial question was where to start to learn how to practice. The ultimate goal would be to infuse something like a 23 foot hull, and then if that went well, something much larger. I would want the thing to be a perfect vacuum before i start, and I have a 120 gallon air compressor I was going to use the tank off of to put in line with the vacuum hoses, after a catch can. So, 30 hg would be the goal pressure wise. I was thinking in the long run to do a 5 layer outside, corecell perforated on eighth inch centers and scored foam core, and then a few layers on the inside and try to infuse it all at once, but that would be only if I can get it to work in small scale. I was just curious before I start throwing money at this toy if I could get a heads up on what type of reinforcement would work best. Stitched, mat, roven? Or maybe even less layers if that would work. I was also thinking about some type of flow medium under the foam, or maybe under and over, depends on how the 4 by 8 comes out. Again, I want to see how the small scale works, and that's why I was doing the 4 by 8. I know alot of the guys that do this for a living are on here, and after watching the video I know I could make that work here once I figure out how to get this stuff to move. A new worldcat sells for over 100K, I would hope to build something similar cheaper (so I can have more!)
     
  13. CatBuilder

    CatBuilder Previous Member

    Uh, I just answered your question about the reinforcement

    The huge 120 gal tank is nearly useless for vacuum infusion. What do you plan to use it for?
    Our infusions use a 6cfm vac pump and a simple pvc resin trap. No tank at all, and i am doing 47/8 ft long hulls in one shot.
     
  14. GringoJohn
    Joined: Nov 2010
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    Location: Quepos Costa Rica

    GringoJohn Fish Slayer

    Ok, that is interesting. I just read alot, and on the internet (ahhh) it says that you need a tank the same size as the amount of resin you are going to be using to do a hull infusion. I'm guessing that isn't correct?

    Ok, I'm rereading the answer from earlier, and your saying I can just use roven with no mat? What would be the best setup for a 23 or 30 foot boat. Like 5 roven, or some stitched or both? then the foam core and then a couple of roven or stitched? Any ideas?

    I love the quote....but the wife may be wrong... :)
     

  15. groper
    Joined: Jun 2011
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    Location: australia

    groper Senior Member

    theres heaps of infusion info in the forum, use the search and read all the threads from start to finish, theres gold info contained within...

    Stitched reinforcements are stronger than all the others regardless of the process used, if your going to infuse they also wetout faster/easier than wovens via infusion - any intelligent designer/builder should use nothing but stitched reinforcements for structural purposes - the others have cosmetic uses...

    Use 30% shade shadecloth for the transfer media or 50% if you want it to go faster, but it wastes more resin.

    You must have zero leaks in your bag/mold, if you have leaks - you will most likely have problems. With a perfect vacuum of -101kpa or better, its more forgiving to mistakes... like if your infusion strategy is poorly planned and you end up with small dry patches, having a perfect vacuum and zero leaks will save your bacon - the dry patches will eventually pull resin from around the dry area into them and wetout. Small, 2 stage, rotary vane HVAC pumps, can be had from any refrigeration wholesaler and will pull a near absolute vacuum. You dont need a high CFM unit, the vacuum pressure is the driving force which is one of many reasons why its so important to have zero leaks.

    Small parts are not efficient to infuse, the setup time makes hand laminating faster and the consumables involved with infusion makes it more expensive for small peices. However, once the size of the part increases, because less resin is used and the reduced resin consumption/cost, this offsets the cost of the consumables and can actually make infusion cheaper!

    Be careful what consumables you buy as it can skyrocket your costs, some are reduculously expensive others not so...shop carefully...
     
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