Heat and pressure together, in a vessel on our own site. Or one of two ovens, where the part calls for it.
Heat takes the resin through its cure.Pressure holds the plies together.
Until cure, a lay-up is a stack of plies held together by uncured resin. A vacuum bag on its own can only press it with the pressure of the atmosphere around it. An autoclave adds pressure on top, which consolidates the plies more tightly and squeezes out trapped air before the resin sets.
The result is a laminate with fewer voids, and voids weaken a laminate.
The cure cycle comes from the material. These are the stages around it.
A leak during cure lets the pressure act on the bag instead of the laminate, so the bag has to hold vacuum first.
The tool goes into the vessel and its bag is connected to one of the 18 vacuum lines for the whole cycle.
Temperature and pressure rise, hold and fall at the rates the material calls for, monitored on the two sensor lines.
The part cools before it comes out, then moves to the separate release room to come off its tool.
Both are on site. Which one a part goes into depends on the material it is made from.
Anything larger than the autoclave is built as cured sections and bonded together in the assembly room.
Any part where the laminate has to be as good as the material allows.
It depends on the material. Each prepreg system has its own cure cycle, so the right temperature and pressure come from the material chosen for your part. Tell us what you are using, or what the part has to do, and we will talk it through.
It is built as cured sections and bonded together. A rough size is enough for us to tell you how it would be split.
When the material is designed to cure under vacuum alone. Out-of-clave prepregs are made for exactly that, and they cure in one of our two ovens.
A drawing, a photograph, or just a description. Whatever you have is enough to get a price, and we reply to most enquiries the same working day.