Repair gone \"cloudy\"

[WS UK]

Can anyone help us??
We have just joined the repair business and have had a problem with two out of our first 30 repairs.
A large area of the repair has ended up cloudy or milky and we are not sure why? We have ended up cancelling the invoices as the customers were not happy eith the end result as visually it loked terrible. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. We think its something to do withthe bonding between the glass. We used heat on both occasions - could this be a factor??

[CPR]

Was there any moisture in the break ?, thats what it sounds like to me.

[GlassStarz]

Cloudy usually means contamination sounds like you didnt get all the moisture out before you pumped the resin to it.
The upside is if its bad enought to be cloudy and you have just finished the repair the snot mixture inside the break is probably not cured.
Drill and vac as much as possible then fill it again then run away as fast as you can ;>}
Now would be a good time to give out that card from your competitor you keep in your wallet. LOL

[StarQuest]

Could you please explain in detail more about these two repairs that went bad? Did you use a heat source because the damage appeared to contain moisture? If so, it would help for you to describe your try out technique step by step and heat source. Like others mentioned, you may have not dried out repair completely leaving a milky resin and water mixture. The other possiblity is that you may have fried the laminate layer by applying to much heat. That would normally result in a flowery look though.

[gold star wsr]

The 'milky' appearance is most likely contamination of some type... moisture is the most common offender.. but other possibilities may include detergent (did the customer clean the windshield to make your job easier?) or air pollution, especially if the damage is old. And, if you have been trained to capture resin at the end of your repairs and re-use it... my advice is only use that resin for practice and dont mix it back into your fresh supply, because that will foul up the whole batch.

[DaveC]

While I agree that the most likely cause for this is some sort of contaminant (beit moisture, chemical or particlute), you could possibly be dealing with an issue of delamination.

[StarQuest]

Dave C,

Your right, if you ever seen delamination towards the edges it does appear milky or cloudy in appearance. It's been awhile sense I super heated a repair on my practice shield to cause delamination but if I remember correctly the laminant will discolor. Maybe WS UK will give us some more info so we can help out, maybe not

[screenman]

Seeing as we have had rain over here for the past 4 months I would say moisture, another thing is always make sure you do a good inspection before you start the job did you check for delamination etc. get inside the car and look out you can get a better idea of what the repair will look like finished.

Where in the UK are you.

[WS UK]

Thanks for the reply's!!
It could well have been moisture. As we are beginners I suppose you could say we are on the cautious side when using the heat gun!! I imagine this rules out 'frying the laminate'. We have since made repairs to chips which have a feint cloudy appearance when viewed from inside the car, and although remained cloudy didn't seem to get a lot worse.
The first two really deteriorated as though there was definately a reaction within the chip.
To dry out the chip we tend to circle the heat gun at a 1 to 2 inch radius around the chip. But as stated before I'm not confident we get enough heat in to evaporate the moisture.
Regards
WS (the midlands!)

[GlassStarz]

When I was in Mildenhal in the early 80's my roomate bought a triumph tr and they made him change the glass before he shipped it to the US back then the glass in the UK didnt pass the US standard so it was different is that the same now?(probably was better you know how our government like to regulate everything)