Doug Wright is building a brand new 35 foot cat

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example of CNC router cutting a female mold directly, bypassing plug development


Photo Credit: https://janseneering.wordpress.com

[2.5-21]

Curious to see how that will hold up over time, Definitely a time saver. I know that a conventional mold is built with 2-3 times the amount of Glass than a boat uses for strength. A lot of conventional molds are still popping out decent products 30+ years later.
A company like Sea Ray only uses the same tooling a few years in a row then builds new models in the same size.

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Milling the 35RT


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[Triad Boats]

Several years ago, Doug did a "top Secret" Special Forces desert attack vehicle hood for me from cad files supplied by my customer for the "part". Doug, converted them, ...skipped the "plug stage"..and milled us a Female finished mold that we could start producing parts immediately from. Saved me, my customer, a lot of time and money to skip the "plug" stage. Also allowed us to meet our client's stupidly unrealistic dead line...a week early!

[Triad Boats]

Over the years...Doug has done several projects for and with me....he is a top notch guy...and light years ahead in the CNC design/build community, and he and Doug JR are light years ahead of any boat manufacturer I know as far as laminate schedules, panel deflection bracing, and epoxy resin chemical and fabric load matching. You will have NO REGRETS doing business with him.

[Scream And Fly]

Doug Wright's designs have always been revolutionary. This one is no different. Just incredible!

Greg

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Video #3 35RT


CNC the tunnel

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video #4


CNC the tunnel

[mjwalters]

I a m still trying to understand. The actual finish surface of the mold is Foam. ? how does one get a proper Gel coat finish?

[mjw930]

More than likely the foam will be the shell that they lay glass and eventually gel onto to make the finished mold. That's just an educated guess.

[AZMIDLYF]

The router/foam method is only replacing the wood forming part of mold building. The rest is the same.

[XstreamVking]

The foam that they cut with the machine is xtreemely hard. Finished out with an epoxy primer and some filler possibly? The production mold would be made from the part out of this foam mold. So, no plug.....

[home made tunnel]

The foam that they cut with the machine is xtreemely hard. Finished out with an epoxy primer and some filler possibly? The production mold would be made from the part out of this foam mold. So, no plug.....

So after CNC work, and filler / prep.... The foam is essentially the plug... So the final mold is made from the foam plug.... it's still a plug though, so why are people saying no plug is needed?
The CNC machine is making the plug... rather than making the plug from wood.

[XstreamVking]

The cnc is making a female mold. From that you get a running "plug" which is a running boat. Check actual performance, and do some mods if needed, then pull a production mold off the running "master" plug if wanted. It cuts out the 1st step of the development process. You could pull a limited number of parts from the cnc mold if that is all you want to build.

[RobF]

if the intention is to make one or two then I can see a foam mold working, just cant see it holding up to a couple dozen

maybe the cost of the CNC foam is such that it becomes more cost effective for a smaller builder and possible for that builder to make each one unique from the one before it by changing something here and there with minimal post mold fiberglass work

you can bring a new 35' into market and test it in a fraction of the time