Pre-preg is a term for "pre-impregnated" composite fibres. These usually take the form of a weave

Weave

Weave may refer to:*Hair weave*Mozilla Weave*Weaving...

 or are uni-directional. They already contain an amount of the matrix material used to bond them together and to other components during manufacture. The pre-preg are mostly stored in cooled areas since activation is most commonly done by heat. Hence, composite structures built of pre-pregs will mostly require an oven or autoclave

Autoclave

An autoclave is an instrument used to sterilize equipment and supplies by subjecting them to high pressure saturated steam at 121 °C for around 15–20 minutes depending on the size of the load and the contents. It was invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, although a precursor known as the...

 to cure out.

There are several advantages and disadvantages of the pre-preg process in comparison to the hot injection process. Pre-preg allows one to impregnate the fibers on a flat workable surface, or rather in an industrial process, and then later form the impregnated fibers to a shape which could prove to be problematic for the hot injection process. Prepreg also allows one to impregnate a bulk amount of fiber and then store it in a cooled area for an extended period of time to cure later. Pre-preg on the other hand can be time consuming in comparison to the hot injection process.

Material advances

Recent advances in Out-of-Autoclave (OOA) processes hold promise for improving performance and lowering costs for composite structures. Using vacuum-bag-only (VBO) for atmospheric pressures, the new OOA processes promise to deliver the less than 1 percent void content required for aerospace primary structures. Led by material scientists at Air Force Research Lab, the technique would save the costs of constructing and installing large structure autoclaves ($100M saved at NASA) and making small production runs of 100 aircraft economically viable.