RENPASTE™ SMP HELPS SPEED PRODUCTION OF NEW LEISURE CRUISER
31 May 2004 - Huntsman Advanced Materials

The plug is produced at Marin, in the Netherlands and will be used by the shipbuilder to produce the actual model from which the leisure cruiser will be produced.

Interboat, also based in the Netherlands, have designed the 8m version of the cruiser for the lucrative ‘grey’ or early retirement consumer market. In the highly competitive leisure boats industry, it is critical to bring new models to market as quickly as possible. A key time-saving factor in achieving this is down to how the plug for the boat is made.

Normally, when made from traditional materials such as wood, this is a highly skilled, labour and time intensive task. However, by using RenShape Solutions Seamless Modelling Paste (SMP) combined with the latest milling technology available through Marin (Maritime Research Institute) in Ede, significant time and cost savings have been made.

Large Scale Milling Capabilities
Marin has a five-axis CNC milling machine used in making models and prototypes from a range of materials, including SMP. It can mill objects up to 13m long very quickly and to a highly accurate finish. It can also mill in non-standard, multiple curve forms, making it ideal for marine and automotive applications particularly.

As the CAD/CAM drawings for the Intercruiser ‘34’ were already available it was a simple task to convert these to the new dimensions for the smaller boat and then to convert these to milling data files. The plug for the new boat model was made from RenPaste SV/HV 4503-1 applied by a special meter/mix machine to a polystyrene foam (EPS) core that was milled a few millimetres undersize. EPS was chosen for this application because of the ease and speed that it can be worked, as well as for its low cost. RenPaste was then applied over the EPS to produce a layer that was eventually to be milled back to produce the final surface of the plug. The RenPaste was allowed to cure at room temperature, producing plug that was dimensionally stable, with a solid surface highly suitable for milling.

The plug comprised of two hull sections and one deck section. They were milled using Marin’s 5 axis equipment, which has the following specification:

Working Range X x Y x Z 13000 x 4000 x 2000 mm
Feed Speed up to 150 m/min
Precision +/- 0.10mm
Controller Bosch CC 220 M
Spindle 12 KW, 500-20,000 rpm.

Benefits of SMP
RenPaste SV/HV 4503-1 is a new version of an already established material widely used for model making in the marine, automotive and wind energy industries. The new version offers two main advantages – a finer, smoother surface to reduce surface finishing operations and lower heat build-up during curing to reduce stresses in the model structure.

SV/HV 4503-1 also retains all the other application characteristics that have made it so successful – fast application of void free layers of up to 40mm by specially designed equipment, and milling characteristics that enable fast cutting combined with very low abrasion of the cutting tool.

For marine applications particularly, RenPaste offers a number of other advantages over the traditional materials such as wood. Under changing environmental conditions, wood can expand and contract relative to moisture levels causing distortion to the model.

RenPaste by contrast is much less affected and can contributed significantly to producing models that have higher levels of dimensional stability over time, irrespective of weather conditions. SMP materials can also be used to provide models and in future moulds for use with the latest boat building technologies, such as resin injection and prepregs that are now being employed to produce composite hulls and decks in the pursuit of lighter and higher performance structures.

Interboat looks forward to the launch and future sales of its 8m Intercruiser, during the coming months.

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