High-gloss composite finishes are unforgiving. Any defect in the tooling surface, any pinhole, any orange-peel, any tiny step, transfers directly to the finished part and becomes visible under raking light. Two Oceans Marine Manufacturing engaged RKT for the tooling and finish specification of a series of composite hatch covers where the visible face had to clear Class-A inspection.
Engineering for surface
We focused the engineering on three things: the mould’s radius transitions, kept continuous in curvature rather than just tangent; the laminate-pressure distribution, analysed to avoid localised print-through; and the finishing schedule of the plug itself, sanded to 3000 grit before the first mould pull.
Outcome
First production run cleared Class-A inspection. The tooling has since been re-used for further runs without rework or re-polishing.
