[Gdeaver]

The materials for wet lay up or vacuum injection composite construction are available from many vendors. Amine epoxy resins are available from many vendors. There are many vendors that sell fiberglass, S2, Kevlar and carbon woven and unidirectional dry cloth. All the materials to do vacuum bagging are available from many vendors to any team. I can order small quantities of core materials, raw honeycomb and corrugated core materials. McMaster sells pultrusions along with several other companies. These materials are available to all teams and can fit into the cost constraints. If any team wants to do wet lay up I can list many, many links to vendors that would be happy to help out a FIRST team do composites. However with prepegs and other manufactured composites that are used in aerospace manufacturing, I can contend that these materials are not available to all teams and with order $ and quantity minimums are not available to all teams. Give me a name of a company that I can order some honey comb material and meet the FIRST guide lines and I'll change my mind. Last year our team wanted to use honey comb material for our ramps. I could not find a source that met the requirements so we used polycarbonate and had weight problems. Would have loved to use this stuff. May be I didn't search hard enough. Find some vendors and prove that it's a valid material.