Molding Carbon Fiber

[NickP]

Anyone here done this? I am certain that there are some u-tube vids but I would like to have options/opinions or other knowledge that may not be shared in a video.

TIA,

Nick

[chevynut]

Nick, seems to me this would be just like making a part with fiberglass cloth. I'm not sure what you really want to know. I've never done it with carbon fiber myself, but I have used fiberglass cloth before. Seems like maybe youtube would be a good place to look for real instructions. Have you googled it?

[chevynut]

This looks like some pretty good stuff...

http://www.carbonfiberdiy.com/

[Run-em]

Think it is not as easy as fiberglass cloth to make something of. The vacuums used in curing/molding carbon fiber are to pull the resin into the mat. Otherwise, the part will have a "hollow" and carbon fiber doesn't like that. Have heard that carbon fiber parts are more brittle than fiberglass molded parts & will crack if such a void is left in the part. Don't know if it is true, but it might explain the need for vacuum process. I kinda think of it as high tensile steel. A part made correctly is super strong, but one with a scratch flaw, will ultimately fail.

[Rick_L]

I think the key deal here is what are you trying to do?

Making structural carbon fiber pieces like you'd see on a race car is going to require pre-impregnated materials, and vacuum bagging/oven bake, or better yet an autoclave (pressurized oven). Beyond the scope of what most can do in their own shop, or at least a lot of trouble.

Decorative parts won't be so hard. The techniques for fiberglass wet layups mostly apply. There's probably some intermediate areas like body panels where you could save weight with a correctly done wet layup.

I was involved with some E-glass and S-glass prepreg molding back in the 70s at my work. Pretty neat stuff. But we never did carbon fiber back then, it was very high end at the time.

There were some links in Nick's thread over at trifive.com that looked helpful.