Florida-based Marine Concepts, Composites Consulting Group (CCG) and DIAB have jointly developed new molds for Boston Whaler.
When contacted by Boston Whaler about a challenging new mold design, Marine Concepts turned for help with the infusion process to Composites Consulting Group (CCG), with whom they had worked with before. One of the main drivers for creating the glass fiber hybrid tooling was to overcome facility constraints for hoisting heavier molds, as the size of our product has grown to 42 ft.
‘Boston Whaler’s changing production requirements made them investigate the viability of new, lighter tooling sets that would be easier to move around,’ said Dean Callander, process specialist at CCG.
Another challenge was to complete the project in the required time frame. There was a large amount of material to handle. The hull mold required eight plies of glass fiber reinforcement and twolayers of 25 mm thick core material. The liner mold required the same amount of laminate and one single layer of core, but its geometry was very challenging, which made construction and infusion difficult.
The project was completed in May 2014 when the molds were successfully delivered to Boston Whaler.
This story is reprinted from material from Marine Concepts, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
