Quote:
Originally Posted by DanEC
That's a good point. I remember seeing some 50s photos of GM laying up Corvette bodies with a chopper gun process - but after the fiberglass and resin was blown into a mold the panel was then transferred into a big press machine with top and bottom dies and the fiberglass compacted and cured. Called match molded or press molded panels which is what early Corvettes used.
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After that process, I think that GM went to a system using Sheet Molding Compound (SMC) (a semi-cured glass-reinforced resin) which was placed in a matched male and female dies, compressed and heated to finalize the cure.
Many later "fancy" cars used Resin Transfer Molding (invented by Lotus) where the molds were much lighter and not necessarily steel. Dry reinforcing material was laid between male and female molds and the resin was injected and/or vacuum-drawn from one end of the mold to the other, saturating the dry material. Sometimes the mix was heat-cured, sometimes with catalyst only.
That concludes today's lesson on composite body construction.
