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It’s twins – well, not quite Two more TP52s hit the water at Persico
Persico were delighted to be commissioned to build two new TP52S for the 2015 season. Having built Rán’s new Judel- Vrolijk Maxi 72 the previous year we already had an established and valued relationship with this very professional team. The second TP52, Gladiator, is both a testament to the strength of this exciting class as well as the ability of the owners to communicate freely for the good of the class. While Persico have now built a string of top-level race boats we were particularly pleased to have the opportunity to add this exciting class to our fleet. The benefit of building two boats is two-fold. Firstly, there are substantial savings as both teams split the primary tooling cost down the middle. The other major benefit is that the time to produce the second boat is dramatically reduced, the tooling is ready to go and the guys are very familiar with the process. We started laying the outside skin of Rán on 18 September, Gladiator’s outside skin started just nine weeks later yet she left the yard just three weeks after Rán.
Hull lines were delivered in September 2014 with the direct female tooling starting soon afterwards. Here at Persico we strongly believe that any boat will only be as good as the tooling she is built from. With this in mind our in- house milling machines were put to work producing perfect direct-milled female tools for the hull, deck and all major components. As is now standard, all hull details are milled in with the hull surface file, including rudder bearing housings, keel socket, all through-hulls and critical reference points. The deck tool also benefits in the same way, avoiding any secondary bond lines and ensuring perfect geometry and
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siting of deck gear. The hull shell was built inclusive of the sheer detail as well as the forward portion of the foredeck. This approach ensured this relatively complex geometry was captured and locked in as part of the hull. This method also ensured an extremely accurate hull-to-deck join. Milling the tools for all these secondary parts not only guarantees geometry but also saves considerable weight, as they are built as ‘parts of’ the primary structure in pre-preg avoiding messy and heavy wet taping.
We strongly believe that the biggest advances in composite raceboat building have been directly associated with tooling and particularly direct-milled female tools. We are fortunate in that Persico’s core business has been tool and mould making for some 30-40 years. Our milling machines are among the biggest and most technically advanced in the world, but we also understand that having access to the milling machines is only part of the story.
It's easy to mill a perfect surface from the designer’s 3D file, but ensuring that the tooling maintains its critical geometry and surface finish throughout the build process is a potential minefield. Having a good grip on the various tooling materials and understanding exactly how they behave at elevated temperatures is absolutely vital. Here at Persico we constantly develop and test both the tooling structures and materials.
For the TP52 tooling we produced direct female hull and deck tools using a combination of timber, glass and carbon fibre. For smaller critical components we will typically use tooling block, aluminium tooling or a mixture of graphite with
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