Hi all,

First post on the forum.

I've recently acquired some Composite moulds from a motorsport manufacturer. They are mainly airboxes and intakes - GT2, GT4 cars.

Having had a long held interest in composites I've decided to use this as a rather large stepping stone. I've done some repair work previously during a past life as an aircraft engineer, although these will be my first 'proper' Carbon fibre projects. I do intend to try smaller projects first prior to jumping into these.

So, my question is, the moulds have been stored for a number of years, what would be the best way to bring them back to life? They are all in pretty good physical condition, with no scratches or marks on the mould surface, although they definately need cleaning off and I'd imagine that re-sealing them wouldn't hurt.

Very interested to hear of any reccomendations.

Thanks, 

Michael.

what are they made of? It looks like tooling board with some sort of painted finish? 

If so I would get a plastic scraper and get all the cured resin of them, then clean down with acetone or mould cleaner and reseal and re-release.
I would presume these tools were for prepreg use too, most motorsport pregs cure about 135degrees, but there are plenty of other materials about that cure at lower temps, and you can do a post cure to get the TG up.

Im an ex aircraft engineer too, spent many years at Airbus but didnt learn that much about composites until I retrained as a laminator.

Keep us informed on what you get up to with these.

Thanks for the info!

They seem to be tooling board as you say.

 I was hoping to try resin infusion on the two pictured, mainly as I don't have an oven yet for pre-preg.

There are more complex moulds also in the lot which are definately geared towards pre-preg, I'll try to get some better pictures to show the moulds and what should be the end results

you are going to have to use some spray tack to ensure the dry fibre stays in the flanges, it looks as though the tool shown above would be placed together and havea bag or bladder through the middle of the top?

INterested to see what other tools you have!

Hi, 

It's a black dot, I had to check

I  should probably have chosen something a little easier to jump into...
I

Yeah those are really for prepreg use. To use infusion you will need to make sure all the parts of the tooling block are vac tight. And you would still need to do an envelope bag ideally.

Where are you located? Im sure someone local could help and give some advice but im not really super experienced with infusion.

You could infuse that quite easily, but I think it will make a mess of the moulds if you dont have the experience to control the resin bleed. Pre-preg will give you better results and the moulds will last longer.

Fun mould to play around with though!