processingdetails

Lay-up

Lay-up, also can be called as hand lay-up or contact molding. It is a manual process of overlaying sheets of resin-impregnated plastic or fiberglass over a mold shape until the desired thickness is achieved. It is a production technique suitable for prototypes and low volume production of fibre composite material parts. The composite part will have a nice smooth surface on one side and a very rough one on the other.

The fibers are manually placed into a one-sided gel coated male or female mould. A matrix of thermosetting resin is rolled onto the fibers using an hand roller. More layers can be added and, after drying, the composite part can be removed from the mould.

Lay-up is easy to control fibers orientation. Furthermore, the process is very flexible as it can produce from very small, up to very large part of different kinds of geometry. The cycle time per part is very long, and only small series can be produced.