View topic - Novacraft Tuffstuff

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"There are no shortcuts to anyplace worth going"-unknown

Impressive.

Wonder how much give it has so it slides over rocks and logs like royalex.

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Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise. Prov. 19:20

Royalex doesn't slide because it gives, but because of the special vinyl coating.

Innegra is a High Density Polypro product with low tensile strength and low tensile modulus, available in white or black. It is hydrophobic, so differing from Kev is does not attract water, and has 3X Kev's elongation to breakage and but bonds with resin better due to coarser surface textured. It has been used successfully as an outer sheath to contain the relatively robust carbon unibodies of race cars and in rigid inflatable watercraft. Using it in 40 mill thick canoe laminations is problematical, but several of us are working on it. It can be had as whole cloth Innegra, bi or quad woven with glass, basalt or carbon or as bi-spun strands. It is bulky, so needs be vacuum bagged, better yet infused, to minimize resin %.

What things can make a cloth "bulky" in a composite layup?

Pretty impressive. I wonder about weight (although I would guess it must be better than ABS) and also about its ability to survive a really bad wrap. The bench test of pliaibility suggests it would be ok, but would it crease like ABS or tear like Twintex?

Good to know that it's home/field repairable.

Innegra is bulkier than traditional fabrics for a couple reasons. It is significantly lighter, SG of .84 compared to 1.44 for Kevlar, 1.8 for carbon and 2.5 for glass, so it takes more of it to make a cloth of any given weight. The fibers also seem to kink during spinning, perhaps because the tow has a "toothy" surface.

In hand/contact lamination, Innegra will float on resin, resulting in resin pools, which are heavy and brittle. Using wet bagging, where the resin may start gellation before the bag squeezes it through perforated release film, there is the potential issue of the fabric's floating to form pools or its bulk holding excess resin. The latter is not all bad, as excess beam thickness yields a stiffer boat, but it will be heavier and more brittle too.

Innegra needs vacuum infusion, as prepreg is too expensive for paddlesport; the world would probably revolt over $12,000 canoes. On the other hand, swimming may be better exercise?

Kinky fibers may contribute to it being stretchier than Kevlar.

We consumers tend toward "name" fabrics like Kevlar. We don't pay attention to the fact that a *composite* made of so-so fibers can equal or surpass a single cloth solution. Wenonah's Tufweave is an example. I'm not so sure that Twintex qualified. This new Tuffstuff? We'll see.

Tuffstuff is Nova Crafts trade name for a proprietary lamination. It will likely not be the only use of Innegra in 2015, or the only trade name, but questions abound.

Do we encapsulate compression layers in Innegra or capture it between glass/carbon layers, or place it inside compression layers? Is bi weave or quad weave superior to blended strands? Figure it'l take a while to sort out, especially as the paddlesport industry is short on stress testing labs.

And, there will be different price points as Innegra is combined with Glass, Basalt or Carbon. It would be cool if a glass/basalt hybrid arrived just as RX is going away.

We do know basalt ranks between E and S glass in tensile strength and modulus, so choices there are a function of cost. Basalt is one of the most common mineral amalgams, so should be cheaper than glass after some ramping up period?

I've inserted an image of a Quad-Weave, Innegra/Carbon laminate.

Do they make it out of obsidian, or some mix of processed basalt?

Mama told me not to paddle processed boats.

That's cheese, processed cheese you want to eschew.

Basalt is made from Basalt gravel in much the same way glass is made from sand. Heated to melting, extruded.

Innegra/Basalt makes an intermediate priced hull, Innegra/Carbon makes a lighter, stronger hull at a higher price point.

Innegra/Basalt bi-spin hull?

There is already some use of Innegra in the water sport industry.

http://www.innegratech.com/applications/sport_marine/

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Brian
http://www.JohnstonPursuits.ca

 

Impressive points, testimonials. I don't understand the hydrophilic/phobic issue, though. My Kevlar boats aren't gaining weight.

While nobody has said it overtly, it seems like we are looking at this new material as a replacement for Royalex. I'm neither an expert in canoe manufacturing nor engineering. So some benefits of this material still need to be explained:

1) The video is nice. But it doesn't come close to replicating the type of impact my 18' Royalex boat can encounter while moving down a river at 14 km/h, loaded with a two people and a months worth of supplies (total load 650 lbs) and slamming into a submerged boulder. Does anybody know about that type of impact?

2) Yes, the exterior coating on Royalex boats is responsible for the ability to slip off rocks. But Royalex can also deform to a certain extent and then bounce back. Does anybody know about the memory of this product? What happens in a wrap?

3) Do we know anything about the buoyancy of this product relative to Royalex?

Any further details would be appreciated.

Thanks