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Chris Rogers - 10/23/2020 12:53:22 AM

The glass plates method seems to work ok for small things but it doesn't do much to control the thickness in a uniform way - and the glass is scary to handle routinely.  The gold standard for plate making is a large heated press which will keep the pressure even - and prepreg. 

For infusion, you can use a caul plate (what one sheet of your glass is) and a shiny mold (the other sheet) but your flow distance will be limited to a meter (in ideal conditions) without core - and even then you may end up with slightly tapered plates from edge to edge.  If you can bury some inter-laminar flow media like G-flow in there or get a fabric with a micro web ply to help with flow you may have better luck too... but at a cost to plate performance.  

How big do you need and what are you using them for?

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Hanaldo - 10/23/2020 2:01:07 AM

Pre-preg between two sheets of glass works very well too. But you need to make the pre-preg sheet the same size as the glass plates, or use spacers to take up the thickness of the sheet, otherwise you get the uneven pressure situation that Chris was referring too. Also a bit hairy making glass bend. If you use very thick glass and the pre-preg sheet isn't that thick then it may be ok, but atmospheric pressure is heavy! 

Infusion I dont find a great process for it, Chris pretty much covered the reasons why. But on top of that, infusion just loves to make a mess of things like this, you get resin going places you don't really want it to go and it can be a real pain in the ass if you are trying to do it more than once. If I can't use pre-preg as above then I much prefer to do a 2-shot process and make two skins and bond them together.