Hi,

Is it possible / safe to use pigments or dyes with EC Infusion Resin and carbon fibre? I'm not interested in using a gel-coat (I can't afford the extra weight it would require) and it is not particularly important that the finish is perfect. What I would like to achieve is to make my parts as white as possible so that they reflect (or do not absorb as much) heat from the sun.

Can you recommend a white pigment suitable for use with your infusion resin and carbon fibre?

Any help appreciated,

Phil.

Hi Philip,

Yes, you could use a pigment in our infusion resin. Generally we don't do this because pigmenting resins (rather than pigmenting none-structural gel coats) will have some detrimental effect on the performance of the resin but there are applications where this is considered a worthwhile cost.

Pigments are generally supplied in a paste called a dispersion. What this means is that the pigment powder can be ground into some resin in order to release the full colour properties of the pigment. Just adding a pigment powder to resin gives a very unsatisfactory result because the powder stays clumped together and doesn't spread through the resin leaving it patchy and the colour very weak.

It's essential when pigmenting any resin that you use pigment dispersion that's based on the same type of resin that you wish to pigment, i.e. you need to use an epoxy dispersion to pigment epoxy resin, a polyester dispersion to pigment epoxy and a polyurethane dispersion to pigment polyurethane resins. The reason for this is obviously that otherwise you'll be adding uncured polyester into your epoxy resin or whatever miss-match you have.

At the moment we have a very limited range of epoxy pigments but we'll very soon carry a full range of epoxy, polyurethane and polyester pigments as we become distributers for the UK's largest pigment manufacturer. In the meantime, please get in touch and we'll see what we can provide.

All the best, Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

Thanks Matt, I'll be in touch.

Phil.

Following on from this, if I wanted to make a coloured part from GRP I would just mix some pigment in with the gel-coat.

Can I do the same with CF parts?

If so I presume that there's an epoxy gel-coat product?

And if so  I'm guessing that from your previous comments I'll need an epoxy pigment to go with the epoxy gel-coat?

Colin

Hi Colin,

Yes, to colour something you'd be using a pigment in a gelcoat. If you used an epoxy gelcoat then you would need to use an epoxy colour pigment, if you used a polyester gelcoat (like a standard polyester gel or our GC50 epoxy compatible polyester gelcoat) then you would use a polyester colour pigment.

Epoxy gelcoats do have the dissadvantage that they are not as UV stable as polyester gelcoats and so if this is your 'final finish' as it were and you're using epoxy to laminate your parts then I would steer you in the direction of an epoxy compatible polyester gelcoat (like the GC50 I mentioned). This gelcoat is polyester based (and so has excellent UV stability) but is designed exclusively to make a great bond with epoxy resin (it won't work polyester resin at all which is why you can't 'double gel' with it). The GC50 takes a pigment really well and the interlaminate strength between it and any of our epoxy resins, including EL2 and IN2, is just amazing. It's more supple than en epoxy gelcoat too so won't crack if the laminate gets stressed.

I hope this helps.

Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

Hi Colin,