Ski Builders Forum

This guy claims you can make your own prepreg by putting it in the freezer? Anyone heard of this?

http://www.woodward-aerospace.com/carbo ... epreg.html

woah so weird all I did was read about this guy and watch some of his vids last week.

The weird thing is I emailed desi from entropy to see if he thought this would be OK to do with his resin.

Its not really prepreg unless the fiber is wetted before weaving from what my research told me.
This seems totally reasonable and would give multi axis carbons longer to absorb and wet.

Great. Now I need to add a walk-in freezer to my list.

Haaa! great minds think alike! I assume Desi hasn't responded. On a side note you guys have decided to go with Entropy? Don't you have to buy a min. 5 gallons?

"real" prepreg is tensioned when it's impregnated, so the fibers have a higher degree of alignment w/ good repeatability. This will result in consistent, greater mechanical properties - these guys are more interested in the cosmetics, so this method works well for them it seems.

I'm fairly confident prepreg fabrics are not wetted then woven. The loom would get pretty gunky.

from what I saw it can be heated and them impregnated and woven or impregnated and heated and then woven.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6814829.html

Had a piece in the freeze for about 5 months now - small sample. Do you want a photo Co? Happy to take it out and see what it does. Kinda forgot about it.

Had put the idea to one side because wetting out on a heated table is all I need to do right now.

I found this to be an interesting link: http://www.advanced-composites.co.uk/in ... sites.html

Have you tried their resin?

Richuk, take it out and see what it does! I am very interested.

Great find on the website info. It does a great job of summing up composite data!

Took it out - it still feels slightly tacky. Will see how it thaws.

No OAC, these guys wouldn't supply their epoxy without it being pre-preg. They were just down the road too!

I have just picked up some flexible cyno and plastic activator. If it works as it says it does, I won't need to go down the flame treatment route.

Reasonable price, straight from the factory and the pre-treatment works for epoxy.

Bottle says, 'forms a strong bond on Polypethlene, Polyproplene, silicon, PTFE, ABS etc'

Initially, just thinking about treating the fresh edge created when cutting the base, but who knows, perhaps he would work on the price if there was greater volume?

A few photo's CO: https://picasaweb.google.com/r.barnes01 ... zP2B__PKAg

The first - straight out of the freezer, I put a white dye in the epoxy, hence the colour. The second, well it needed a bit of heat to softer it up (the pan base was warm).

I think this piece had largely gone past its sell by date, as some areas had in fact gone crisp. Thinking about when I actually used white dye, this piece was at least 7 month old.

Mythbusted! Thanks for the info and pics rich

If you're going to try this, ensure you use a bag with an airtight seal (with desiccant is best). Epoxy is pretty susceptible to moisture before it cures, and that moisture will lead to voids.

or just use ECA408 hardner. And 180 degrees heat during press.

If you can survive opening the can and mixing into the epoxy, after that it's pretty odor free and stable, and stays liquid for 45min to an hour for us.
It wont kick until you throw heat at it for 45min to an hr also.

I just say this because then you have so much time to totally saturate your layers real good.