hi guys, I would like to hear at what temperatures you guys cure your pre preg parts at? I have an oven which I can get up to 70 degrees quite easily, but getting it up to 80 degrees will require some work on my home made oven > can i cure at 70 degrees? if so do i just extend the oven time to say 11hours??

Hi !

^^ cheers fella, I spoke to EC (Matt) today and was told pretty much the same thing, so been and bought an extra heater for my oven today  

Can you post some pics/description of your home made oven ?! It will interest me!

ovens are pretty easy to build, there's loads of threads on here about building them but as a basic oven: celotex box, fan heater. Mine are more developed using PID controllers for ramp and dwell and cool down control, thermocouples & heating elements with a centrifugal fan.

I cure at 72 degrees usually with the OOA stuff I use. It is a perfect finish and works really well.. The only down side is you need to really buy a minimum of 10 meters of the stuff.. 

This is the finish out of the mould..

Umeco (which was ACG) have a low temp material than can cure from 65 deg C. It will take a long time to cure so the hotter the better and the less time your oven and pump need to run.

Typically for every 10 deg increase in temp your cure time will halve.




http://www.lavender-ce.com/wp-content/uploads/pds1154-vtm260-issue5.pdf

cheers for the posts and advice guys, some great info here.




My oven is simply 100mm thick 8'x4' celotex insulation board, making my over 2200mm x 2200mm x 1200mm, I have a fan assisted oven internal sas the heater and a very similar control system as shown on the pre preg video that easy composite show on there tutorial.

Dont forget that an OOA pre-preg has much less pressure acting on it when the resin begins to flow. The lower temperature gives it more time to flow and speeding up the cure cycle when the resin needs to flow the most may lead to pinholes as the resin has too little time to do its thing.. I do an overnight cure usually from about 6pm through to 10am the following day and get flawless parts. I dont need to speed up the cure as it works out prefectly for me and the heater is quite efficient at the lower temperatures once you get to 85 degrees+ the heater is almost running constantly in my oven which uses a 3kw fan heater and is large enough to do full motorcycle body kits with ease..