Pg. 1 of 14 Vacuum Infusion - The Equipment and Process of Resin Infusion Introduction The Vacuum Infusion Process (VIP) is a technique that uses vacuum pressure to drive resin into a laminate. Materials are laid dry into the mold and the vacuum is applied before resin is introduced. Once a complete vacuum is achieved, resin is literally sucked into the laminate via carefully placed tubing. This process is aided by an assortment of supplies and materials. In a typical hand lay-up, reinforcements are laid into a mold and manually wet out using brushes, rollers, or through other means. An improvement on that method is to use a vacuum bag to suck excess resin out of the laminate. Vacuum bagging greatly improves the fiber-to-resin ratio, and results in a stronger and lighter product. If you are unfamiliar with vacuum bagging, we recommend reading our brochure, Vacuum Bagging Equipment and Techniques for Room-Temp Applications, as VIP requires experience in this area and uses many of the same principles. Vacuum infusion builds upon these principles, providing further improvements to the lamination process. Benefits of Vacuum Infusion Vacuum infusion provides a number of improvements over traditionally vacuum bagged parts. These benefits include: • Better fiber-to-resin ratio • Less wasted resin • Very consistent resin usage • Unlimited set-up time • Cleaner VIP offers a better fiber-to-resin ratio than vacuum bagging. A typical hand lay-up usually results in excess of 100% fabric weight by resin. Resin alone is very brittle, so any excess will actually weaken the part. Vacuum bagging can reduce this number significantly; however, it is still not ideal and can lead to additional problems. While ...
