An experiment in the reduction of production time

Faced with the prospect of having to laminate over 25 separate panels for the interior bridge deck galley area, I decided to run an experiment in vacuum bagging multiple layers and panels all under one vacuum bag. Did it work? I think it did but given the marathon layup session and a bit of a hassle peeling all the layers of peel ply perf and breather off,  I'm not sure if I'll be so bold in the future.

Here's the result:

That's a total of 11 separate panels laminated front and back and stacked all under one vacuum bag.

It went like this: 

lower part of the bag ( vinyl flooring on a temp floor panel)

plastic membrane to keep the lot from sticking to the vinyl flooring

peel ply

glass

foam

glass

peel ply

perf

peel ply

glass

foam

glass

peel ply

perf

peel ply

glass

foam

glass

peel ply

perf

breather

top vac bag.

beer

I think it was worth it because it would have taken me at least a week to use the peel ply bondo spreader method to bond both sides of the 11 panels that I made in one night. 

Here's a few tricks that I learned.

pull the individual groups of panels up and lean them against something

I used a few wooden wedges to separate the groups of panels

( this wasn't that difficult)

score the individual panel edges with an angle grinder on both sides along the panel seams then pop them apart like sheet rock.

After pulling off all the peel ply, I did have a few flaws where excess resin gathered but nothing a little sanding won't fix.

would I try this again?  Maybe not.  I may just turn on some good music and lay some panels up one at a time for a while.  If I were in a race to produce the most panels in a day I may give it another go but I can think of a few more enjoyable ways to spend an evening.