Jake Thanks!
Funny thing I used peel ply and I made a perforated bleed sheet out of 4 mil plastic that I was going to put over the peel ply - but we got so tied up in the moment that we put the felt right on the peel ply and forgot the 4 mil bleed sheet. It was a tug to get the peel ply off because the felt sucked up some resin, like it should, and stuck to the peel ply.
I was testing the pump and showing Craig how it worked when I was done I turned off the pump with a vacuum on the pump but had the valve open. It siphoned the oil out of the pump and into the manifold. I had to vacuum the oil back to the pump. I added some oil then and recovered some more. With the tube on the exhaust it spit a little oil, with the tube off it smoked. I used tropical slow hardener and let the pump suck for about 4 hours.
Mine does the same...this is apparently the difference between an $80 pump and a $600 pump (though I paid $200 for mine and it's the same as yours!).
When vacuum bagging carbon uni strips to my friend's basement wall (he a had a wall that was failing), we couldn't achieve enough vacuum to cycle the pump periodically and it was smoking (vaporizing?) the oil and spitting it all over the place...that's why I asked. We eventually switched to a $70 venturi valve running off a compressor and it managed to draw more volume at the same (reduced) vacuum level we were getting with the mechanical pump...but I don't know if the vaporizing oil was due to the lowish vacuum or just the constant running I was dealing with.
