1. Preparation
Do a good job in matching prepregs, forming molds, and furnace test pieces, clean up the resin and debris remaining in the previous mold, and keep the mold clean and smooth.
2. Cutting and laying prepreg
Prepare carbon fiber raw materials to be made into products. After the prepreg passes the re-inspection, the material area and number of sheets of raw materials are calculated, and the raw materials are pre-pressed and stacked layer by layer to press into a dense body with regular shape and certain quality;
3. Mold setting and solidification
Put the folded raw materials into the mold, put the plastic airbag into the mold at the same time, put the whole into the mold machine, add a certain constant pressure and temperature to the internal plastic airbag, and set a constant curing time;
4. Cooling and demoulding
Cool the mold that has been hot-pressed for a period of time, then uncover the mold, perform demoulding, and clean the tooling mold:
5. Processing and forming
After demoulding, the product needs to be cleaned with a steel brush or copper brush to scrape off the residual plastic, blow it clean with compressed air, and polish the molded product to make the surface smooth and tidy:
6. Non-destructive testing and final testing
Conduct non-destructive testing and final inspection on productsCarry out non-destructive testing and final inspection on products
The molding process is to put a certain amount of prepreg into the mold cavity of the metal mold, and use a press with a heat source to generate a certain temperature and pressure, so that the prepreg softens, flows under pressure, and is full of flow under a certain temperature and pressure. , filling the mold cavity for molding and solidification, thereby obtaining a process method for composite material products.
The characteristic of the molding process is that heating is required during the molding process. The purpose of heating is to soften the resin flow in the prepreg, slow down the mold cavity, and accelerate the curing reaction of the resin base material. As the prepreg fills the mold cavity, not only the resin matrix flows, but the reinforcement material also flows. The resin matrix and reinforcing fibers fill all parts of the mold cavity at the same time. Only when the resin matrix has a high viscosity and strong adhesion can it flow together with the reinforcing fibers. Therefore, the molding pressure is high, and the metal mold is required to have high strength, high precision, and corrosion resistance, and a special hot press is used to control the process parameters such as temperature, pressure, and holding time of solidification molding. The molding method has high production efficiency, accurate product dimensions, and smooth surfaces. Especially composite products with complex structures can generally be molded in one go without damaging the performance of the composite product. Its main disadvantage is that mold design and manufacturing are complex and the initial investment is large. Although the molding process has the above shortcomings, the mold molding process method still occupies an important position in the composite material molding process.
