CF rear subframe?

[A1ex]

You get an improved strenth to weight ratio using an auto clave as you use less resin to bind the fibres together and you also have less risk of failure due to delamination. The load is carried through the fibres not the resin and you use the same materials for both setups with the autoclave helping to improve curing times and to some degree the resin strength.

The method I use is a bit of hybrid as it is under compression as it would be for vacuum forming rather than just sat there as wet layup. This means that a lof the excess resin is sqeezed out so you do get parts closer in nature to the vacuum formed parts vs the wet layups. I need to working on the autoclave side now, generally parts are cured in a 'warm' environment to give a consistet curing time for production. Regular resin melts again at around 150 Deg C I think.

[RattyMcClelland]

More rep for Alex the kid.

[A1ex]

Cheers for the rep mate, that's bonza

Anyways, off topic of the 2ws sub frame but on topic what we've discussing I've acidentally done a bit of an experiment...

Made some double skin CF brows today using my standard setup in the make shift 50 degree oven then realised I did a 'traditional' wet layup for the prototypes in the same situation so had a chance to compare the two and the results are in...

To make the parts with my compression technique uses <10g of resin per part and the finished part weighs in at 23-24grams.

Using the traditional wet layup it used 15 - 20 grams of resin, had 1 sheet of fibre instead of two and weighed 25-26 grams.

So if you take the strength of the resin as basically nothing (big forces this is true) using my methos gives a part twice as strong as a wet layup! Result!

Also left the spare resin at room temperature with the part cast at a higher temp, got home 7 hours later and the part was rock solid with the left over resin still soft. So some proof the increase temp improves curing. Anyway, I'm going to stop being a geek now ROLL ON JAPFEST

[JayJay]

Niiice work