Starting carbon fiber fabrication, questions

bullitt5897

The internet is full of tutorials... I will caution you that it is a big commitment to go down this route and if you are going to go down this route and make molds and such you will have a HUGE learning curve. Spawn aero learned the hard way and it ended up with them banned on nearly every internet forum in the world. You are also in a cold weather state so expect to have issues of cold weather for much of the year... The cold weather is going to affect not only your molds but the consistency of your parts... Most beginning companies start with one to three layers of carbon depending on the part and some use fiberglass backing to save on cost...

A word to the wise it is not as easy as it looks and be prepared to do a LOT of revisions to make things look right. Also, there is a lot of consumables involved with this kind of endeavor as well.

Wrapping may be a better solution...

Mike

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Gauge

Show yourself the door please.

While I respect your wisdom. The investment I put into "trying" it is money I can basically throw away. I bought a beginner "kit" just to try to do some iterations to see what works and what doesn't. I'm very aware (based on research) that this is a time and learning commitment. I'm prepared to make that commitment. I'm also not trying to sell parts. I'm just doing this to start a new hobby, and maybe make some parts at cost for friends if it works out.

I was going to go for 2 layers but I think 3 is the way most people go for interior. But I might consider just wrapping over the plastic as you stated. The problem with wrapping is that if I screw up I can't try again. With a mold I can try as many times as I want.

As far as wrapping interior parts I almost think wrapping might be the better option. CF will weigh more than plastic of the same thickness won't it? So a one layer wrap of CF will probably weigh less than a 3 layer pure CF part.

Of course on exterior parts you can't make this compromise. Also I'm not going to use fiberglass. I think adding layers of fiber glass under the first layer defeats the point. I'm not someone who is satisfied with something just looking pretty, it must be functional as well. If you're going to use a combo of CF and FB then you might as well wrap IMO. That is unless it's function is outside of what CF is supposed to do. Like interior parts.

Thanks for your constructive post though.

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