I dont know Paul sadly.. I may have spoken to him. But I know Carl quite well as well as Glen and obviously Steve and Helen. I went to see them about materials when they had just started up in a small unit and it was just the two of them.  So I have both been lucky to see them grow and lucky to try out some of the material they have been developing well before it is given to others. The latest clear OOA carbon I got to try from the development roll once they had got some good results from it.  If you saw the original DF212 spec sheet the cure schedule was their own schedule but the later one they have now has my cure schedule. It sort of worked but the pinholes were still there on complex shapes but once I did a few parts with a couple of changes to the way it ramped and would dwell it works every time so as I got to try their materials first for free I gave them my schedule. 


I go over there every few weeks to collect material and they are all genuinely nice there.  The tooling I am trying at the moment is one that is an evolution of the material I was given to try about a year ago. Not sure if it has a spec sheet yet as the instruction I was given by Carl is different to the spec sheets I have seen for the tooling systems I have seen on their site.. 

Just done the second section, the side. I did take this off the master to have a look and see how the tooling works. The original test tooling did let you see the glass weave on the surface so I didnt want to use it as it may leave an imprint or possibly the part may start to damage the mould in that area as there was so little resin. But this looks great. The finish looks spot on the mould is half the weight of the old glass one but is feels stronger and for what may be a limited run of fuel tanks should be more than strong enough. I never imagined making more than about 10 to 15 from the original mould anyway and I have done 4 of the first batch of 9 tanks already so it may only ever make another 5 tanks as the bike was not so popular. 

Original mould section


New mould section..

Almost done.. Only two small sections left to do... So far it seems to be strong and quite easy to do and get a good surface. I was more worried about the surface finish than the lay up as I had tried a previous version where the surface layers glass layer was not fully immersed in the resin and was visible. It felt smooth but I did not want to risk using it on  a mould that needed a good surface. Luckily it was only a small sample of the material so I had not spent a lot of money trying it out. 

I have to say I am quite impressed so far.. I am looking at going over to more pre-preg tooling for the future. 

coming along nicely mate, prepreg tooling is fun to work with on big projects

The guy who has been making my tooling so far is not so keen on it.... He tries to push me down wet lay tooling and his prices dont add up now when I mention material costs... the £2500 fuel tank mould was about £500 in material I seem to remember.. now I have done this and all bar the tank base has cost me about £400 in material his pricing seems to no longer match when I talk to him even though the end cost remained the same... lol..   I asked about some cover mould which he quoted me £250 for in glass tooling and £350 for carbon tooling.  A difference of £100.. I worked out in pre-preg the material cost would be £13 for the surface and about £35 for the backing giving a total of £48 for the materials..  1/4 sq/m of surface and about 1/2 sq/m of backing.. And that is being on the safe side... 

Speaking from a business point of view though, I never charge  my customers cost price for the material, I add 30%. I provide a break down of prices, one section being material costs. These costs are what I am charging the customer for the materials, not what I pay for the materials. 

Yeh fair enough, I do try to support my customers when something goes wrong. You would hope that everyone is the same, but I guess that's not always the case. 

Exactly..... If he felt bad and was doing a new mould at a good price especially as he had not fixed the initial problem, I would have expected he would do the next mould with materials that he knows would work better than the materials that had a problem and do it to see what could be used for future moulds. If not for free but at cost. I had always said I would never haggle a price if I am getting good moulds and I would stick with him. But when things go wrong you expect the same respect to be returned. 

This area had been repaired once and started to crack again. 



The blame by him was the mould cooling with the part still in the mould and I had not de-moulded hot.

By Marbocote.. The gelcoat was not suited to pre-preg use or the main body resin had not fully cured correctly and was not hard enough.

By Nord, Scott Bader etc.. The resins used were not suited to pre-preg use. 

Done... Just going through post curing now and then loads of sealer and release...


 
The weight is in Kilos...