Hi all,

I’m trying to infuse a new spinacker pole for my dinghy from a mandrel.

Mandrel is 3000mm long, thick end is 150mm dia and thin end is 50mm dia.

Layup is
200g weave
300g uni X4
200g weave.

The previous one didnt go well so I’m asking for some of your input.

The last one we did the weave and all the uni in one hit leaving the top wave for a seperate one.
We used peel ply coiled helicularly, then bread wrap with the easy flow mesh over that, two spiral coils (One for in, one for out places onnoposite sides of the pole) then the bag.

Resin in was at the fat end that fed in to the spiral plugged at the other end with some breater
The out pipe was fed into the out spiral, again with the breather over.

Used infusion resin, 10mm tubes with 6mm spiral.

Problems: it took forever for the resin to compleate the infusions, when we unwrapped, there were dry patches.


Has anyone got some hints as to how to improve his process?

If you need more info please say, will try to add photos when I find them.

Thanks
Jamie

You may need more spiral down the length a bit to help force it along. 

Infusing traditional  UD fabric is very very difficult as there are hardly any gaps between the fibres and thus the resin does not flow between the layers well. 


Warren Penalver
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Support Assistant

Can you use Soric 2mm core?  It will act both as a core for rigidity and a flow medium.  Put it between the 4 layers of uni.