1. Composite Mold Design Project 1 – prepreg press mold

2. Wet lamina Wet lamina are textiles with the resin applied manually, there may be many stack textiles. The resin used has often high viscocity. The problem with these lamina is that once the fiber is impregnated with the resin the product has to be shaped because the curing can not be stopped anymore. This type of setup is lowest possible cost.

3. Expanding cores in closed moulds If a tubular lamina has to be created the section modulus (second moment of inertia I) of the beam depends critically on that the profile is a closed lamina. Any seam or flange will increase mass and decrease stiffness. A typically product for such process is a mast. If the mast is of costant cross section a pullwinding die is made. If however the cross section changes or if the lamina is not straight another type of mold is needed. Braids are laminated on a CORE which can be of varying cross section and can have some bends. The braids are the most expendive textiles on the market (100 euro/kg – carbon) as compared to textiles less than 50 euro/kg. Hollow mast molds have an expanding core of some type, rubber och folie that press the textiles outwards

4. Hollow core molds - lamination procedure and setup The molds are prepared with a release agent or a folie cover (polyamid). The textile is placed on another folie and impregnated with resin. This stack is than placed ontop of the expanding tube/bladder/rubber core) and together placed inside the mold. This most notebly leads to the fact that the wet textile is between 2 plastic sheets and can glide there. As the bladder expands this gliding is needed to push the textile into the mold and shapes the ready product. The mold is clamped before the bladder expands under pressure.