ThomD
>"The vacuum presses are great. Especially for curved surfaces. I don't know, but I imagine that you are right and this is a step down from some industrial process."

Depends what one means by a step down. It's less gear and uses mostly gear we have. It does have various advantages. It's a bit like clamps, every time one glues something up, one doesn't necesarilly want to put a tommy-bar on the clamp and crank for all one is worth. But having the big guns at times, is good too.

Vac bagging was a reasonably improvised thing for decades. Then I remember, all of a sudden ads showed up in FWW etc... for expensive finished looking systems. Nothing wrong with that but one is paying something for the hand holding, and for adopting only one concept of the process.