Hello,

I am planning on doing an infusion of a 5’5” x 20” surfboard. The board itself is made out of xps foam. I plan on doing the whole thing at once. I’m a little worried about the foam twisting while under vacuum. I’m thinking my solution to this is to do a hand layup of carbon rails (basically just around the perimeter of the foam). In my mind this will prevent the foam from distorting while under vacuum.

The epoxy I’m using has a viscosity of 350 and a working life of 40 minutes. The working life is what I’m concerned about. My plan to combat this is to pull vacuum from the wide point on both rails. I will then have spiral tubing running the length of the board on the deck and bottom with a resin feed line in each. I have no idea if this is a good idea or not but with only 40 minutes working time, it makes sense to me.

As for the lay up, it’s an xps foam core followed by 4 oz E cloth fiberglass, 2mm lantor soric lrc, 4 oz E cloth, peel ply, then bag. There will be spots along the rails were there is no soric, these spots will have flow mesh on top of the peel ply. I made a diagram of what I’m planning.

This will be my first go with infusion. Am I on the right track or will my ideas not work? Any input is more than welcome.

Thanks.

Thanks for the reply this is exactly the info I was hoping for! I’ve done a ton of hand lay ups on surfboards. The reason for the infusion is really because of the Soric. With surfboards, xps foam has a lot of delam issues. A lot of the delam issues seem to be caused by pressure dents from feet. On xps, the bond of the resin to foam is much weaker than the glass itself, so the foam gets compressed and the glass springs back causing a delam. I’m hoping the Soric prevents this by preventing pressure dents in the first place. And honestly it just sounded like a fun project, and if the idea works it has tons of potential.

I was planning on cutting the Soric to fit both the deck and bottom just to the point where the carbon tape comes up the rails. This should prevent it from wrinkling.

I really want to put my resin inlets on both sides of the board in the center with spiral tubing running the length. I feel that’s my best shot at getting a full infusion, with vacuum being pulled on the both sides at the center point.

I think maybe when I hand lay the carbon tape on the rails, I could run a narrow strip of 4 oz e cloth down the middle on both sides. This is where my spiral tubing will be. Would it also be a good idea to run spiral tubing around the perimeter from my vacuum lines?

Sounds like I should also use the flow mesh on the whole board.

This is an experiment , and if it fails, it fails. But I would like to give myself the best chance I can at being successful with it.