“DD Fiberglass” – www.ddfiberglass.com

An open mold process in which components or successive plies of reinforcing material or resin-impregnated reinforcements are applied to the mold, and the composite is built up and worked by hand. Curing is normally at ambient temperatures, but may be accelerated by heating, if desired.

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

Easy to control fibres 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.