Within the composites industry the search goes on for cost effective methods of producing both components and tooling. Demands upon final products will depend upon the appearance and performance required, and will affect the selection of manufacturing technology and tooling material.

The scope of this Review Report is restricted to those techniques which essentially involve a moulding process, i.e. hand lay-up and spraying, vacuum assisted methods, prepreg technology and resin transfer moulding. In each case the author describes the selection and properties of materials, equipment and tooling production, manufacturing procedures and typical commercial applications. Much additional data and many more examples of commercial materials and applications are provided in the References and Abstracts section, which contains some 437 abstracts to the published literature, selected from the Polymer Library.