Advances in Sail Materials and Manufacture
In addition to advances in the exotic materials and consequent cloths themselves, manufacturers have also progressed the manufacturing process with the creation of glued, molded and laminated sails.
Glued sails are regular paneled sails but instead of sewing the pieces together, the sail maker uses a special, ultra-strong polymer glue which bonds through the use of ultrasound.
In molding, a curved mold is designed and created in the optimum (three dimensional) shape of the sail that the sail maker wants to produce. A film of PET film is placed on the mold and a special gantry hovers over the film laying the yarns based on instructions of a computer that has the model of the sail. Once this is done, a second sheet of PET film is placed on top and the whole mold (with the sail) is placed in a vacuum oven which causes the materials to bond (curing). The result is a smooth sail which is lighter and has a wider effective wind range (the minimum and maximum wind speed that the sail can withstand and be effective).
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