What is the difference between resin and fiberglass?

Answer 1

Fiberglass is glass fibers either chopped , ground, dispersed or woven into a cloth or made into a powder form to make paste, in most cases in the woven cloth form, which comes in many different types of weaves and pattern's Uni directional meaning, fibers going mostly one way and and Bi directional meaning, fibers going in both ways equally . chopped mat is random, the glass fibers are going all over the place in many different directions or woven roven, is a heavier weave . These weave patterns and their weight and how one placed or stacked them one on top of the other in layers can contribute a great deal to the overall strength and performance quality's of the finished fiberglass part or product.

Resin's like Epoxy, Vinyl ester and Polyester are most typically come in the fluid form, some resin's are in the solid form known as EV / elevated temperature or HT/ high temperature resin system's made into fibers then woven into modern composite cloth blended into the fabric's fibers which for the most part are advanced composite's these fibers melt together during the curing process in an autoclave / pressurized oven, or underneath a high temp electric heating blanket and once they have cooled and the resin has blended with the other fibers and cools it becomes a solid ridged part. Liquid resin's known as RTM /room temperature matrix's come separate into two parts requiring a catalyst or hardener to kick the resin off into a chemical reactions which produce's high temperature on its own at room temperature to help make the resin bond to the fibers which then become's a solid part in order to make the product. resin's like Polyester, Vinyl-ester and Epoxies, their respective mechanical performances follow in the same order, epoxies being the strongest and toughest