Fibreglass Mouldings With Hand-lay

By Author: Dave Chapman
Total Articles: 1
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As with many types of material, fibreglass mouldings can be created with a range of methods. From garden shed based laminating for personal projects, to large scale manufacture, there are numerous methods of applications and manufacture of fibreglass available. As you can imagine most of the manufacturing methods have evolved for the years and have been created to solve a certain problems that have arisen. You could say that fibreglass has gone through 70 years of evolution, and possibly more so than most other materials in that time. As wood and metals have been used for a much longer time, fibreglass has experienced a rapid advancement.

One of the the first methods employed to create fibreglass mouldings is called Hand lay. This is often the starting manufacturing technique learned by trainee laminations.

Since the invention of GRP (fibreglass) at the end of the World War 2 hand lay is both the most simple, and cost effective method when compared to the alternatives. Spray Lay is also cost effective, but does not result in such high quality products. Despite the key qualities of hand lay, the Fibreglass mouldings ...
... produced with it can yield a range of results. An untrained or inexperienced laminator can often only produce very crude edges and simple shapes. The most common unprofessional use of hand-lay is usually applied like a paint, which can result in often messy repairs or products.

These bad applications often give fibreglass a bad name, however with a professional Fibreglass mouldings solutions company, hand lay can be a hallmark of quality. Far from garden shed kit cars and boat repairs fibreglass can provide an unmatched level of consistent quality when compared other materials.

When the hand lay process is combined with high quality tooling, moulds, and a capable skilled laminator the quality can be unmatched. Unlike high quantity mass manufacturing methods, your gaining the experience of the laminator in each product. You gain multiple sets of eyes, constantly providing strict quality control. You may think, like other hand crafting methods that you gain imperfections, and subtle differences in each product. But with Fibreglass, a high quality mould ensures every product is identical.

Hand laid fibreglass often results in the best quality GRP, perfect for high fidelity products for fibreglass furniture and technologies. You can see examples of this in many airports, and mass transit terminals as they are well suited for those types of installations. This method is also good for high performance uses, many racing mouldings often employ the use of hand laid fibreglass. It is still even used by the ministry of defence, and many of their contractors for radomes, shrouds and other military equipment. This is due to its hard wearing nature, and its microwave transparency.

Military uses often test fibreglass to its limit, and many of the fibreglass mouldings have been made with sufficient layers, and technologically advanced glass fibre weaves that allow GRP to have bullet proof qualities. Although Perspex, Kevlar, and a variety of metals are usually the first choice for bullet proofing when human life is involved.

I hope you enjoyed my first post on Fibreglass mouldings, the next article will be on the intricacies of the actual manufacturing process itself .
Fibreglass mouldings