Carbon fibre

[SIX]

In recent years i have done quite a few fibre glass mouldings

with good success. I am now thinking of doing myself some carbon parts first of all using carbon weave and later on probably prepreg. When using weave is it a special resin or can you use standard glass resin? and clear gel any help on this subject would be appreciated many thanks 7up

[Robster]

You need clear gel coat, and clear resin, normal glass fibre resin will work. I have found that you may need to 'dilute' the gel coat with some resin as it can be quite thick and you need a thin and even layer. You really need to draw a vacum around the mould and carbon, as unlike glass fibre, it will try and pull away from the mould, and you will get a lot of air bubbles between the gel coat and the cloth.

[EFA]

Leave it to the pro's.

 

A decent autoclave costs more than most houses. This is the only way to get a decent finish.

 

Moulds also have to be same material as finished item to give same expansion rate.

 

 

Arnie Webb

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[DanB]

Hhhmm, not sure I agree on that. To get the full benefit of using CF you have to use pre-preg and then it's necessary to use an autoclave (or at least an oven). Wet lay-up CF isn't really that much better in terms of weight or stiffness than woven glass fibre (e-cloth) but it does look better! I've made several things (OK, mostly flat panels but some 3D stuff) from CF. I've found that the best way of doing it is to use epoxy for the resin, and to use a layer of epoxy as a gel-coat. But I've also used polyester resin (gel-coat and laminating resin) and this works fine, although some CF fabrics say they should only be used with epoxy. The finish from a wet layup like this is probably never going to be as good as a pre-preg one but the bottom line is that if you can do it in glass, you can do it in carbon.

 

Dan