Resin infusion introduction

We had fun with the post title yesterday, but today we’ll try and have fun with two videos. They are very amateur’ish, as is our credo (almost)!

Now what we are going to be showing you in the two videos is the fundamental process of resin infusion. What resin infusion does, is transfer resin from a bucket through the system and into a catch pot. The system itself is that crude drawing we made yesterday of the polyethelene tubing, the project itself, the resin trap and the vacuum pump.

So to get ready to show you the process, we use some mold release so that we don’t get things stuck where we don’t want them! A quick spray inside the catch pot will keep any wayward resin from sticking to the various parts.

It’s a little hard to see, but we are testing the catch pot for leaks. We plug the resin inlet hole with a finger and fire up the pump. The vacuum gauge is holding at 25 bars of mercury

The digital read on our pumps vacuum gauge shows the same reading

Now we’re ready to test the throughput of the system. We clamp off the resin inlet line and fire up the pump

That get’s us into the videos! Here is the first unedited video and be sure to watch the white polyethelene line, before and after we remove the clamp. It’s clear or white when the clamp is attached and then blue’ish, the color of the vinyl ester resin, after we remove the clamp.  That is showing that the resin is being pulled up through the tubing and it will wind up in the resin trap.

Did you see the color change? Once we removed the clamp, the vacuum pulls the resin in through the system.

Now in this second video, we open up the resin trap so that we can see the amount of resin that was transferred within the system.

The amount of resin isn’t so important, only that you can see that we’ve moved resin from one bucket through the tubing and into the catch pot / resin trap.  That’s the basis for resin infusion, there are a number of resin impregnation schemas that use this concept, resin transfer molding, sometimes called RTM uses this concept and you may have seen that in your aftermarket fins, also VARTM vacuum assited resin transfer molding is this exact process.

Now you should have an understanding of the fundamental process of resin infusion, the vacuum is strong enough that it can transfer resin from a bucket up and through the system. In our next instructional we’ll introduce a very small almost rudimentary project, so that we can see the resin wetting out the reinforcement fabric right before our eyes.

The partial system, with the polyethelene tubing still white

Thanks so much for following along and as we get into the process of using resin infusion to actually infuse some reinforcement fabrics, we start the discussion on why resin infusion offers some benefits for wakesurf board construction and to you as a wakesurfer.

If you prefer to watch the two videos in the Youtube viewing pane, here are the links: Resin Infusion process and then a peek inside the catch pot AFTER the resin infusion

Technorati Tags: resin infusion, wakesurf board