Hi

I'm going to be making a mold of the part detailed below:

http://www.talkcomposites.com/3221/Looking-for-best-way-to-make-this-mould

I've used Epoxy tooling gel coat backed with polyester resin and CSM before and it's worked well for me.

can you suggest any alternatives?

The mold will be made in two parts and is intended to be used multiple times for carbon/epoxy parts using the vacuum bagging technique.

How much tooling gelcoat do  you think i would need?

Thanks in advance

Hi,

For the mould materials I would suggest Uni-Mould. It's our inexpensive universal tooling system; it uses a vinylester tooling gelcoat, vinylester coupling coat and filled polyester tooling resin. If you use the system in this way (as a complete system) then you can use the moulds for just about any process, including out of autoclave pre-preg, in-mould post curing and of course wet-lay (including vacuum bagged) with any resin system (epoxy, polyester, vinylester) or resin infusion (again with any of these resin systems).

If you know you'll never be using the moulds at elevated temperatures and you can do without the other advantages of using the Uni-Mould system in its entirety (such as its zero shrinkage and fast single layup) then you can just use the Uni-Mould Tooling Gelcoat and then back it up with standard GP polyester resin and chopped strand mat. This would be a much better solution than backing-up an epoxy gelcoat with polyester resin; you'll get almost no bond with polyester onto epoxy (it almost self releases) and so if you've got away with it this far then you've been quite lucky.

As for how much you'll need; I would think (looking at the picture) that 1kg of Uni-Mould Tooling Gelcoat would be adequate.

I hope this helps and look forward to working with you. The pattern looks good so far.

Best regards, Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

Thanks for the quick reply!

I think i'll be going with the uni-mold tooling gelcoat and backing up with polyester resin and CSM.

Still some work to go on the plug but I'll be finishing it in a 2k primer filler, do you think this will release ok once polished and waxed?

Yes, that should be fine for a release. Give the paint a good bake (or lots of time) to fully cure, afetr that, I wouldn't expect any problems.

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales