Hi Dennis,

Personally I think you should be able to infuse it all in one hit. Gravity doesn't make a huge difference and I'm confident that the resin would be able to climb up the other side of the tunnel if you ran the spiral down one (long) side and then had the vac on the opposite side. If you make a split mould you'll have a flash-line to contend with and split moulds for infusion can be complicated (the seams will leak so you can either seal them shut, gelcoat the mould or envelope bag the whole assembly (like Andy did on his Noble). If you don't need a split for mould release reasons then I wouldn't include one.

We made a carbon fibre tunnel for our kit-car earlier in the year which was a similar (although simpler) shape and it infused fine.

It might be worth using some T-Pieces and having a few vacuum take-off points on the other side because it could be difficult to predict where the resin will get to last. If you hade a vac line on the opposite side at either end and one in the middle then you could clamp off any vac lines that the resin reached early to save drawing through a lot of resin whilst you wait for the resin to reach the last corners of the part.

I hope this helps, Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

2 part mould

Hi Dennis,

Here is a picture of a plug with gel coat on it.  What would be your recomendations for infusing this. Keep in mind once this is a mold it will be basically a U-shaped mold. The kick out you can see in the picture is not on the other side. the other side is smooth.  The lowered sections in front and back (left to right) are flange area. The part area is 32" (813mm)long. The max height is 16"(406mm) and the max width is 16"(406mm).

 I really only see two options....

1. Infuse from the side and let the resin go out along the flange in the spiral then go down one side of the U and back up the other side of the U....

2. Infuse from the end and have the resin as it enters have to climb up the walls of the U in the spiral then across the part.....

Any sugestions would be greatly appreciated. Please be specific as to where I should run the spiral.

Thanks,   Dennis