I need some help, I just recieved my first order of prepreg and after playing with it for the last couple days I am horribly disappointed.  I have been working with other prepregs from another supplier and I have had pretty good success with conventional prepreg that is meant to be cured in an autoclave even though I have been using it in an out of autoclave process.  So far the first 5 things I have tried to make with easy preg have all been complete failures.  I am super frustrated because I spent a lot of money to buy a couple yards of the material and have it sent to the US and at this point I am feeling like it all needs to be thrown in the trashcan because it seems completely useless.  I will describe the setup that I am using and maybe someone can tell me what I might be doing wrong.  I will also attach some pictures of the problems I am having.  I have tried metal molds, composite molds with a gelcoat surface, cnc machined solid teflon molds, and tonight even a sheet of glass to see if I could get a good surface finish and so far all have failed miserably.  For my mold release I am using a chemical release called Freekote 700nc which has performed beautifully with the other prepregs I have used.  I am vacuum bagging with a flexible bagging material called stretchlon 200 and with a solid release film and a breather cloth.  I have used cure schedules all over the map from 180 deg F for ten hours up to 275 deg F for less than an hour and all have yielded similar results  The max amount of vac I am able to achieve here is about 26.5inches of mercury and that has proven to be acceptable for the other prepreg I have used but I am wondering if it is not enough for the easy preg because I have read a couple of places that a near perfect vac level above 29 inches is necessary.  I leave the vac pump running throughout the process every time.  To top it all off I am not at all happy with how the cured fiber looks and  find it to be some of the most boring carbon fiber I have ever seen anywhere.  There seems to be such a lack of contrast of the alternating fibers that it almost doesn't even look like carbon fiber at all, I would hope that if I could get my surface finish issues resolved the appearance might also improve but I am skeptical that it will ever look as good as any of the other various  fabrics I have worked with.  For me the selling point of this prepreg was that it was great for making cosmetic parts and I am disappointed to say the least.  I appreciate any input that I can get and really hope that I am doing something wrong and that I can learn to love this easy preg!  Thanks for your help.

Thanks to all of the suggestions I have received here I am getting much closer to success with the easypreg.  I will attach 3 pictures below that show from left to right:

Thanks nebraskatrevor for the updates, I ve been following the entire post because I'll try prepreg for a project soon and found a lot of usefull information on here! keep us updated when parts come out of a mould

Matthieu Libeert
Founder MAT2 Composites X Sports
website: www.mat2composites.com

Glad to see the improvements, trev.