Anyone know about Schiada. West coast
10-23-2009, 12:15 PM
#41
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Agreed on lighter is better.
Agreed on construction especially that you need at min a vac bag to get the bonding to set correctly.
Couple of points Id add here-
Ive not seen a squegeed piece come out lighter than bagged piece with a balsa core but I have a foam one. My guess is that you an squegee resin into the spaces the balsa has, but the squegee cannot "pull" excess resin from them.
Foam has no where near the structural rigidity as balsa- See attached - but balsa is "wood" although balsa when bagged removes the majority of the concern/stigma of having "wood" in a boat.
Carbon Fibre boats constructed without an Autoclave is a marketing gimmick with no weight to it. Carbon needs to get way hotter than 200 degrees and be under pressure to get the carbon filaments to flow creating the bond. (MClaren has a real autoclave)
Some guys say OL'S oven are an autoclave and I dont think they are.
Agreed on construction especially that you need at min a vac bag to get the bonding to set correctly.
Couple of points Id add here-
Ive not seen a squegeed piece come out lighter than bagged piece with a balsa core but I have a foam one. My guess is that you an squegee resin into the spaces the balsa has, but the squegee cannot "pull" excess resin from them.
Foam has no where near the structural rigidity as balsa- See attached - but balsa is "wood" although balsa when bagged removes the majority of the concern/stigma of having "wood" in a boat.
Carbon Fibre boats constructed without an Autoclave is a marketing gimmick with no weight to it. Carbon needs to get way hotter than 200 degrees and be under pressure to get the carbon filaments to flow creating the bond. (MClaren has a real autoclave)
Some guys say OL'S oven are an autoclave and I dont think they are.
10-23-2009, 12:22 PM
#42
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Lighter is "always" better.
Light by leaving stuff out is probably the right thing for owning a boat -- less stuff to buy, less stuff to carry around, less stuff to break, ...
Light through construction is another good approach.
First, any boat built with polyester should be avoided. Stress cracks, osmotic blisters, and they rapidly structurally deteriorate (they keep looking shiny, but they get very flexible). Way too heavy, brittle, weak, and short lived, send directly to the land fill.
Second, any boat that is not cored is simply too heavy, flexy, and therefore slow to be considered a performance boat.
If its cored, it simply has to be vacuum bagged. There is no other way to get a decent bond between the laminate and the core.
So the absolute basic for an acceptable performance boar is cored (generally foam or balsa), vacuum bagged, and vinyl ester resin.
A significant step up is to use knitted material instead of woven roving and mat. The knitted material is really multiple layers of unidirectional with some very light stitching to hold the layers together as the boat is being built.
Now, let's say you actually want a better boat: lighter, stiffer, and therefore faster.
Vacuum infusion may in some cases be an improvement over hand-laid construction. However, one-off builders around the world have repeatedly found that squeegees in the hands of skilled workers yield a much lighter boat! But most people spreading resin in a mold are not highly skilled, and they leave way too much resin in there, because it looks better. The more resin, the weaker the structure! So given the typical low skilled resin spreader work force, infusion will lead to a lighter boat.
The real step up is to use wet-preg epoxy, where the resin is forced into the cloth between rollers. This yields resin contents closer to the optimum (very low) numbers to get the stiffest, strongest, lightest structure. Epoxy needs to be cooked in an oven, usually about 200 degrees for boats. The oven is just a big room with heaters, fans, and insulation. When the boat is in the oven, its still being vacuum-bagged. This is what Outerlimits does. See the thread on "birth of a race boat."
Next better comes pre-preg. This is like wet-preg, but the pressures are higher so the resin content can be lower.
Pretty much the best in the boat building industry is to combine pre-preg with special films specifically designed for the type of core material. This last level causes a dramatic improvement in laminate to core bonding, with a dramatic decrease in weight due to not needing the heavy goop otherwise required between the core and laminate.
The absolute best is to use pre-pregs and film in an autoclave. An autoclave is an oven where the pressure in increased. This means the vacuum bag is being pressed much harder against the laminate, squashing the layers together more firmly. Very few boats are built in autoclaves: America's cup, some multihull sailboats, that's pretty much it. But this is how aerospace structures are built.
Light by leaving stuff out is probably the right thing for owning a boat -- less stuff to buy, less stuff to carry around, less stuff to break, ...
Light through construction is another good approach.
First, any boat built with polyester should be avoided. Stress cracks, osmotic blisters, and they rapidly structurally deteriorate (they keep looking shiny, but they get very flexible). Way too heavy, brittle, weak, and short lived, send directly to the land fill.
Second, any boat that is not cored is simply too heavy, flexy, and therefore slow to be considered a performance boat.
If its cored, it simply has to be vacuum bagged. There is no other way to get a decent bond between the laminate and the core.
So the absolute basic for an acceptable performance boar is cored (generally foam or balsa), vacuum bagged, and vinyl ester resin.
A significant step up is to use knitted material instead of woven roving and mat. The knitted material is really multiple layers of unidirectional with some very light stitching to hold the layers together as the boat is being built.
Now, let's say you actually want a better boat: lighter, stiffer, and therefore faster.
Vacuum infusion may in some cases be an improvement over hand-laid construction. However, one-off builders around the world have repeatedly found that squeegees in the hands of skilled workers yield a much lighter boat! But most people spreading resin in a mold are not highly skilled, and they leave way too much resin in there, because it looks better. The more resin, the weaker the structure! So given the typical low skilled resin spreader work force, infusion will lead to a lighter boat.
The real step up is to use wet-preg epoxy, where the resin is forced into the cloth between rollers. This yields resin contents closer to the optimum (very low) numbers to get the stiffest, strongest, lightest structure. Epoxy needs to be cooked in an oven, usually about 200 degrees for boats. The oven is just a big room with heaters, fans, and insulation. When the boat is in the oven, its still being vacuum-bagged. This is what Outerlimits does. See the thread on "birth of a race boat."
Next better comes pre-preg. This is like wet-preg, but the pressures are higher so the resin content can be lower.
Pretty much the best in the boat building industry is to combine pre-preg with special films specifically designed for the type of core material. This last level causes a dramatic improvement in laminate to core bonding, with a dramatic decrease in weight due to not needing the heavy goop otherwise required between the core and laminate.
The absolute best is to use pre-pregs and film in an autoclave. An autoclave is an oven where the pressure in increased. This means the vacuum bag is being pressed much harder against the laminate, squashing the layers together more firmly. Very few boats are built in autoclaves: America's cup, some multihull sailboats, that's pretty much it. But this is how aerospace structures are built.
That is a GREAT POST!! If you don't mind I'd like to copy that and put it on my website under the wizdom section.
Never heard it worded so simply before. I shot that post over to Lee and asked him why they didn't go Epoxy over vinylester on the 43 just for curiosity, and he wrote back :
The Schiada is 100% vinylester with quad-directional knitted structural skins, Carbon Capped Balsa Stringers, Cabon Capped balsa bulkheads, vacuum bagged 1" to 1.25" balsa core throughout entire boat including cockpit. She is as light, stiff, and strong as she can be short of going the pre-preg, epoxy carbon route. We opted not to go Epoxy as vinylester provided better heat distortion numbers without an overly excessive weight penalty. On the west coast, our boats routinely see 200+ degree surface temps on dark colors during our yearly 125+ degree summer heatwaves out on the desert lakes. As soon as we see temps greater than what the laminate sees in the oven, we get "post-postcuring". On a race boat, epoxy is the only way to go. We don't know a racer alive who wouldn't trade some epoxy heat distortion and fabric/core print for a lighter, faster, stronger boat. Our customer base, however, wouldn't stand for the cosmetic finish a "desert" summer or two down the road. When you look into the side of a CNC tooled pleasure boat, all you should see is yourself looking back. And when you look into that hull side 10 years down the road, all you should see is 10 more years on yourself.
With that said, would be happy to build epoxy boats for anyone who wants them as long as they understand the downstream cosmetic implications, particularly for those in more temperate climates.
- Lee
With that said, would be happy to build epoxy boats for anyone who wants them as long as they understand the downstream cosmetic implications, particularly for those in more temperate climates.
- Lee
Last edited by RiverDave; 10-23-2009 at 12:26 PM.
10-23-2009, 01:13 PM
#45
Registered
Both, I was looking at one of their cats this summer and it looked like you could see ribs along the side. It almost looked like a honeycomb structure.
It reminded me of the honeycomb core carbon fiber pieces I had seen at McLaren and ford racing years ago.
Not that I will ever have the money for one of their boats.
It reminded me of the honeycomb core carbon fiber pieces I had seen at McLaren and ford racing years ago.
Not that I will ever have the money for one of their boats.
10-28-2009, 02:57 PM
#48
Registered
This is what it takes to make "Real" carbon fibre parts using the definition we've all come to understand and associate with F1 technology. It takes tremendous heat and pressure to get the carbon filaments to flow into the core material
Yet there are at least half a dozen boat builders touting their "carbon fibre" layups.
"Carbon Kevlar" is touted by another well known MFGR that doesn't even vacuum bag.
As Lee says dark colors on hot days in the dessert sun get hotter than some mfgr's ovens.
Be on the lookout for nonsense around every corner.
UD
10-29-2009, 07:37 AM
#49
Platinum Member
Platinum MemberThread Starter
[QUOTE=Uncle Dave;2981261]This is what it takes to make "Real" carbon fibre parts using the definition we've all come to understand and associate with F1 technology. It takes tremendous heat and pressure to get the carbon filaments to flow into the core material
Yet there are at least half a dozen boat builders touting their "carbon fibre" layups.
"Carbon Kevlar" is touted by another well known MFGR that doesn't even vacuum bag.
As Lee says dark colors on hot days in the dessert sun get hotter than some mfgr's ovens.
Be on the lookout for nonsense around every corner.
so is that an autoclave oven.... and how would you get a 40' boat in there..
Yet there are at least half a dozen boat builders touting their "carbon fibre" layups.
"Carbon Kevlar" is touted by another well known MFGR that doesn't even vacuum bag.
As Lee says dark colors on hot days in the dessert sun get hotter than some mfgr's ovens.
Be on the lookout for nonsense around every corner.
so is that an autoclave oven.... and how would you get a 40' boat in there..
10-29-2009, 08:52 AM
#50
Registered
[QUOTE=Jassman;2981674]
That looks for all the world to be a true Autoclave oven. In that particular oven you could not get a 40ft boat hull in but you could get pieces in it. There are bigger ones, for sure. but I don't know of one in our industry large enough to fit a 40 ft hull mold.
I have heard some exotic sailboats actually are made that way, and you could likely fit one hull of a multi hull in an oven this size but Ive never seen one.
Your Nor-tech was awesome and about the biggest 40 ft-er on the water as you said- curious.... why did you sell it?
UD
This is what it takes to make "Real" carbon fibre parts using the definition we've all come to understand and associate with F1 technology. It takes tremendous heat and pressure to get the carbon filaments to flow into the core material
Yet there are at least half a dozen boat builders touting their "carbon fibre" layups.
"Carbon Kevlar" is touted by another well known MFGR that doesn't even vacuum bag.
As Lee says dark colors on hot days in the dessert sun get hotter than some mfgr's ovens.
Be on the lookout for nonsense around every corner.
so is that an autoclave oven.... and how would you get a 40' boat in there..
Yet there are at least half a dozen boat builders touting their "carbon fibre" layups.
"Carbon Kevlar" is touted by another well known MFGR that doesn't even vacuum bag.
As Lee says dark colors on hot days in the dessert sun get hotter than some mfgr's ovens.
Be on the lookout for nonsense around every corner.
so is that an autoclave oven.... and how would you get a 40' boat in there..
That looks for all the world to be a true Autoclave oven. In that particular oven you could not get a 40ft boat hull in but you could get pieces in it. There are bigger ones, for sure. but I don't know of one in our industry large enough to fit a 40 ft hull mold.
I have heard some exotic sailboats actually are made that way, and you could likely fit one hull of a multi hull in an oven this size but Ive never seen one.
Your Nor-tech was awesome and about the biggest 40 ft-er on the water as you said- curious.... why did you sell it?
UD
