Talk Composites - The Forum for Advanced Composites

peel ply and breather without release film?

http://www.talkcomposites.com/Topic11020.aspx

By dbcrx - 5/3/2014 12:16:28 AM

just recieved our rather huge order for some repairs we need to do. initially we were going to try infusion so we didnt order any release film, but now feel we're better off sticking to wet lay and vac bag.
if i put breather straight onto peel ply am i going to have a nightmare removing it? the areas are mostly flat and im pretty good with wetting out with minimal resin. would a second layer of peel ply be any use?
i really need to get on with the job tomorrow as we're already getting behind schedule so dont have time to try and find any release film.
By dbcrx - 5/5/2014 11:13:43 PM

Well, it didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped. I think the bagging was ok as we couldn't find any leaks anywhere, but there was obviously air coming in through the surrounding core as we just couldn't get it to full vacuum and it slowly returned to 0 after turning the pump off.

It still did a fairly nice job of consolidating the layers though (probably no better than I could have done by hand but it was fun to try), so it should all be ok.

This was the first patch. This was after the vacuum was released so the resin spots are hard to see, but the perforated bin bag allowed around 1-2" circles of resin into the breather. The breather and bag pulled off effortlessly.


And the end result.

This was the big patch on the roof. Laid this one up today but had the same problem again. We also had a very small patch so I tried that one with just peel ply and breather, no release film, so we'll see how they turn out tomorrow.

There's a large area we have to do inside the hull too, but that spans two bulkheads and goes behind two stringers so I'm not even going to attempt to vacuum that one. And there's about 6/7 patches along the keel which are quite small and simple so may have another go on them. All these ones also involve kevlar.

And if anyone's interested, this is the rest of the boat. It's an 80' offshore race boat with 4 1500hp engines!

And we're supposed to have it back in the water for the 15thw00t