The guy who has been making my tooling so far is not so keen on it.... He tries to push me down wet lay tooling and his prices dont add up now when I mention material costs... the £2500 fuel tank mould was about £500 in material I seem to remember.. now I have done this and all bar the tank base has cost me about £400 in material his pricing seems to no longer match when I talk to him even though the end cost remained the same... lol..   I asked about some cover mould which he quoted me £250 for in glass tooling and £350 for carbon tooling.  A difference of £100.. I worked out in pre-preg the material cost would be £13 for the surface and about £35 for the backing giving a total of £48 for the materials..  1/4 sq/m of surface and about 1/2 sq/m of backing.. And that is being on the safe side... 

coming along nicely mate, prepreg tooling is fun to work with on big projects

Almost done.. Only two small sections left to do... So far it seems to be strong and quite easy to do and get a good surface. I was more worried about the surface finish than the lay up as I had tried a previous version where the surface layers glass layer was not fully immersed in the resin and was visible. It felt smooth but I did not want to risk using it on  a mould that needed a good surface. Luckily it was only a small sample of the material so I had not spent a lot of money trying it out. 

I have to say I am quite impressed so far.. I am looking at going over to more pre-preg tooling for the future. 

Just done the second section, the side. I did take this off the master to have a look and see how the tooling works. The original test tooling did let you see the glass weave on the surface so I didnt want to use it as it may leave an imprint or possibly the part may start to damage the mould in that area as there was so little resin. But this looks great. The finish looks spot on the mould is half the weight of the old glass one but is feels stronger and for what may be a limited run of fuel tanks should be more than strong enough. I never imagined making more than about 10 to 15 from the original mould anyway and I have done 4 of the first batch of 9 tanks already so it may only ever make another 5 tanks as the bike was not so popular. 

Original mould section


New mould section..

I dont know Paul sadly.. I may have spoken to him. But I know Carl quite well as well as Glen and obviously Steve and Helen. I went to see them about materials when they had just started up in a small unit and it was just the two of them.  So I have both been lucky to see them grow and lucky to try out some of the material they have been developing well before it is given to others. The latest clear OOA carbon I got to try from the development roll once they had got some good results from it.  If you saw the original DF212 spec sheet the cure schedule was their own schedule but the later one they have now has my cure schedule. It sort of worked but the pinholes were still there on complex shapes but once I did a few parts with a couple of changes to the way it ramped and would dwell it works every time so as I got to try their materials first for free I gave them my schedule. 


I go over there every few weeks to collect material and they are all genuinely nice there.  The tooling I am trying at the moment is one that is an evolution of the material I was given to try about a year ago. Not sure if it has a spec sheet yet as the instruction I was given by Carl is different to the spec sheets I have seen for the tooling systems I have seen on their site.. 

SHD,s owners all come from ACG (now cytec)all the many data sheets they produced over the last 20/25 years had various versions of putting glass toes in at various points to help it de gas, No one ever did it thou as it never made any difference !

Be interesting to see if this does do anything ?

Do you have any dealings with Paul Russell at SHD ?

Only rep I know at a composite firm who has actually been there at the coal face and done the job and knows what they are talking about

All the others are just good salesmen who will show you a fantastic flat sample taken off flat glass sheet

Or very good "theoretical" chemists who will tell you how it "should" work

Cheers.. It is thin but it is what they recommended and I agree the last 200 gram layer is not going to do much with a 1-8-1 lay up. The glass on the surface layer is to help get the air off the material and I guess help the resin flow. I did try a previous version on some flat sheet to see how it worked but there was some glass visible on the surface when it cured. The new material has not had the same issue with the moulds I have seen so far. The previous version worked perfectly in an autoclave but not so well as an oven cure. This has been developed as an oven cure tooling and looks to be working very well on all of the moulds I have seen and what I have seen so far on the flange faces. 

I did cut into the corner then overlay from the flange up onto the part face about 5mm to 8mm as didnt want to just rely on the backing layer. As this is the first pre-preg mould I have had to make I have only done what I was told would be a sure way to get the material to work and to be honest once I have made the next 5 tanks from the mould I have no idea how many more I will make from it.... I dont see it being hundreds... lol..

DONT cut the 1st ply into the corners ! Not if you want a mould to last.

If you don't 45 strip in the corners do what they do at Williams and take your 1st part of the ply into the corner and 5mm onto the other face.

then when you do the other face butt that into the corner.

DONT cut the 1st ply into the corners ! Not if you want a mould to last.

If you don't 45 strip in the corners do what they do at Williams and take your 1st part of the ply into the corner and 5mm onto the other face.

then when you do the other face butt that into the corner.