Ski Builders Forum

I can find easily a 240 gsm triaxal spread tow or a C ply carbon (compositesworld:Bi-angle fabrics find first commercial application Or Spread-tow carbon fabrics reduce mass in America’s Cup catamaran)
But my Google search just gave me peanuts on USA or Canada.
Any suppliers there?

thanks

I know it's not America but give Eric at Carr Reinforcements a ring (in the UK) they weave the stuff. Not all their products are on the website (by a long stretch!) but they are considerably more economical than textreme and essentially the same product.

http://www.carrreinforcements.com/

I second composite envisions for good buying experience. This fabric is so easy to work with, you can cut the exact outline of your board/ski. The binder keeps it together almost like a sheet of paper. I feel like you have to work resin into it from both sides and scrape the excess off both sides to keep it thin and light. You can't really get the same level of confirmation that the resin has gotten to the middle of the fabric (or come up from under the fabric and the air has gotten out like you can with a weave). I'm going with warm resin and pressing with heat hopefully before the resin gels significantly. Go squeegee Go!





The spread tow carbon/ Innegra should be a great material for protecting lightweight cores from impacts/dents:



http://www.swiftcanoe.com/#!textreme-in ... c19q7/c40c

give a shout when that hits retail channels

FYI on textreme: it presses great at higher psi's with even thicker low viscosity resins, but if you are vacuum bagging, you need a high viscosity resin and need to ensure that you have scraped and then rolled any excess resin out from under the laminate. It really doesn't let resin through the fabric as occurs readily in woven fabrics and I think this is why it can pool into lumps under the lower pressures of a vacuum bag.

I have some lumps on the top of a board I made with vacuum molding, despite really trying to scrape resin of the parts first on a lay-up table and getting a fair bit running out into my breather fabric. (I also had my vacuum line a bit constricted which also was a factor-partially melted it when it got too close to a heating element.)

If you are vacuum bagging, I'd use the high viscosity resin that is made for resin infusion systems. 200 to 400 cps or whatever the centipose unit is for viscosity. and I'd warm the resin to 90F or so also.

I'm thinking of using Resin Research 2050 next time, haven't been able to find a resin in the 200 centipose range that is recommended (for infusion) by the Textreme folks.

Anyone have a favorite runny/high viscosity resin that post cures at 180F or less?

Anyone have a favorite runny/high viscosity resin that post cures at 180F or less?

I use Tap Plastic's Marine grade resin, it works really well in vacuum pressing. Low VOC's and plenty of work time makes it the resin of choice for me. A little expensive but a good all around epoxy. Haven't had any delams with this in a long time; I usually let my decks cure for 48 hours before trimming them.

I normally infuse with Huntsman Araldite LY1564 & Aradur 3487 combo, very LOW viscosity of 200-300mPa.s, 2hr+ pot life, 80degC cure temp (175degF)

I've also used my normal laminating resin Huntsman LY/HY 5052 combo heated slightly to around 30degC (80-90degF) to LOWER the viscosity from 500-1000mPa.s (depends on the room temp significantly) down to 200-300mPa.s

thanks for chiming in, It looks like the huntsman brand is a good one, I'm going to try and find that one here in the US. I did learn that millipascals per second are the same unit as centipoise, good fun.

Rhyme, It looks like the TAP has a viscosity of 450-550 depending on the hardener used. That's about where I'm at with resin research 2050 which is the same viscosity and is perhaps a better match for carbon in terms of toughness and stiffness, thanks