Hello fellow composites enthusiasts,
just want to send my regards from Germany. I'm working with fibreglass for quite some time now mostly to repair my windsurf boards. Currently I'm refitting my 24 ft sailing yacht. Lately I did some research on how to improve some working methods and got into vacuum infusion. Since I have to reinforce some lager areas of the hull working overhead against gravity my new approach is to use resin infusion, because laminating the bow by hand was a really pain in the bum. I've used the following layer sequence from inner to outer layer: quadraxial 820g, biaxial 320g, woven 160g, biax 320g and 160g woven fibreglass. I relay struggled with the saturation of the quadraxial layer during hand laminating but also the biaxial layer wasn't easy to saturate completely. Do I need coupling layers between the quadraxial/biaxial layers?
In the last weeks I've done some resin infusion tests. Most of the time I've used the above layer sequence but I've varied it from time to time. I've failed quite often. My main issue was the saturation of the fibreglass especially when I've used the knitted infusion mesh.  I've tried to build a buffer zone at the vacuum side by cutting the infusion mesh shorter leaving 5 to 10 cm bare peel ply. On another approach I've only covered a certain area of the the resin inlet and vacuum outlet with infusion mesh. The results were always the same. Saturation in the areas of the mesh is very bad. The bare peel ply gives a good saturation of the glass but it causes the resin to move so slowly, that I'm afraid I wont be able to use this technique on larger areas. Maybe you can give me some advice on how to handle the saturation issues.
Besides that I'm having a little trouble with the resin catch pot's gauge, because often the needle of the gauge won't go back to zero. I always have to lift the little rubber plug to reset it.
Cheers! Daniel