Building Light with Vacuum Resin Infusion

Vacuum Resin Infusion is the process of drawing resin into a dry fiberglass matrix which is under vacuum. The fiberglass is wet out inside a ‘vacuum bag’ which is connected to a vacuum pump through plastic pipe manifold. We often infuse 30 or 40 gallons of resin in one shot and the infusion takes about an hour. There are several methods to accomplish this process and we have tried many. Years ago we started with visqueen as the bag material and a shop-vac as the vacuum pump. We certainly have made our share of mistakes along the way but we know have settled on our way to do vacuum resin infusion that gives a great deal of control through the process as well as predictable and consistent results. With the infusion process we can achieve air free laminates that use much less resin and a comparable open hand lay method giving us a lighter part without compromising strength. We will go over the the components we use to make a “VacuumBag” and look at the details of our process. And finally we will show the final product.