finished parts look like this

interesting, i wouldve thought for fiberglass you would lay it inside the mold, fill it with resin, vacuum suck it and then let it sit till its dry

that's thermoset molding

aha

which is popular as well

but thermoform is faster

vrom vrom

in many cases it takes hours or even a day or more to cure themoset parts

which is why one of our customers had to basically shut down for two years and rethink their tooling

i can imagine that takes a long time

how does it work for thermoform molding?

how come it's faster?

you just heat the material in an oven, take it out of the oven and form it, let it cool

the fiberglass is pre-impregnated with polypropylene or other plastics

so it's just a sheet of plastic/fiberglass

ahh cool

the fiberglass layup you're referring to is good too but it's used for diff purposes

these are just trim panels that don't need much structural strength

i came across it for windmill blades

funny enough we apparently had a project for windmill blades a while back

before i worked here

the tools are the biggest we've ever made

hah, can you still put that in an oven to do thermoforming?

yes

seems kinda big

it is

we specialize in huge parts that would otherwise be extremely expensive to make

hows that done?

we have a real big oven

lol

alright

and our tools are much lighter weight and require way less overhead than typical of compression tools

what are the dimensions of that oven?

i think width wise we've got like 12 feet

some of our customer's parts are wider than our oven so we actually overlap pieces sometimes to make it work

big oven

incase of f.e. those windmill blades, do you fit the entire part in at once?

or is the oven moved along it length wise or something?

can't remember what they did for those