I'm stumped.
The micron gauge came in today and our vacuum is fine. I pulled vacuum from one end of the part and the other reached 500 micron (29.98") in half an hour.
Shrinkage in our resin system is only 0.35%. Meanwhile we cut the latest part in half and the estimated porosity was almost 2%...
We are only injecting a few visible bubbles at the beginning of the infusion.
Is it true that the higher the hydrostatic pressure of the resin, the smaller the bubbles will be? So if we pressurize at 100 psi the bubbles will be half the volume of if we pressurized at 50 psi, due to boyle's...
The problem is not one big void but lots of "microvoids" between the fibers but still visible to the eye.
The epoxy isn't styrene based and it doesn't really have volatiles. My thinking regarding the degassing is that there are gas bubbles, but there is also dissolved gas that I don't think...
We are using RTM on a square preform woven in three dimensions. I know most RTM is done on flat two dimensional weaves.
How do I minimize voids? All of the literature I'm finding only deals with 2D preforms.
1. Should vacuum on the mold be maximized while injecting the resin into the mold?
2...
