The boat is being manufactured at no cost to the project by the Torpedalo Manufacturing Consortium – a group of fantastic companies who together have ensured that not a single penny of donated money has to be spent on designing, building or equipping our craft. This is so important for us, as it means all donated money goes to charity! The Consoritum is lead by Norco GRP, with significant support from machining company Curvature Group and a team of four materials suppliers.

The Torpedalo Manufacturing Consortium

These are the companies that, together, created the Torpedalo from Mark’s design. Here’s a breakdown of what they’ve supplied and how the manufacturing sequence worked:

• John Burn have supplied SikaBlock M440 tooling board, which has been used to create 1:1 replica mould tools of the boat from which female moulds have be taken.
• Lathams supplied over 60 MDF boards, from which the structure of the mould tools was built.
• Cured carbon fibre is a composite of woven carbon strands and epoxy resin. While Hexcel supplied various carbon fibre cloths, Sika sent all of the resin that we need in the form of CR80 and CR82 BiResin.
• The hull and top deck of the boat are made from a sandwich construction of two skins of carbon fibre either side of structural core foam. SP-High Modulus, the marine division of Gurit, have supplied M80 CoreCell foam for this.
• Concept Group International machined direct female moulds for small parts in to John Burn foam. The rudder and drive leg will both by machined at CGI.
• Curvature Group and MonsterCAM together have the second-largest role in the Consortium. They have machined 1:1 mould tools of the boat (also known as a “plugs”) – full size models of the whole boat, from which glass fibre “female” moulds were taken. They started by creating an MDF armature, which was then clad in the M440 foam from John Burn. They then used huge CNC machines to cut the foam in to the shape of the boat.
• Norco GRP took delivery of the mould tools from Curvature and MonsterCAM. They used them to cast the aforementioned female moulds – one for the main hull and one for top deck. These moulds were checked and prepared, before layup of carbon fibre started. The outer skin, foam core and inner skin were applied in three separate operations, with curing in between. In the meantime, Norco laid-up the internal bulkheads and floors of the boat. Once all parts are released from their tools, they were bonded together to form the boat. Unidirectional carbon fibre tape will be run around the joint face between the hull and top deck for structural integrity, and then the whole boat will be post-cured.  Norco will then carry out any surface finishing and paint the boat, ready for us to fit-out!