Where can i find carbon fiber kits for sale in the US. I have a case idea that may work well with it. Thanks
i know you can get them off of ebay. there was a site that i saw that sold raw materials like that, but i forgot where, i'll reply when i find the address.
its not actually that bad to work with tbh - I know mashie has a guide over at his site and a few pics of me in action over at moddin.net http://moddin.net/project.asp?projectID=12 http://www.mashie.org/guides/cfbalsa01.html
um did you see the molds he had to make ?? and no disrespect to mashie, but that CF wasnt entirely smooth. If you want perfectly smooth Carbon fiber you need a super smooth mold along with a good technique (vacum injection is the preffered method) Im planning on buying large sheets of glass and then making a large sheet and cutting it to size
well yes - you can go the vac route - which I have also tried whilst making kiteboards a while ago - even then i found that i had to do alot of handiwork afterwards to get a completely smooth surface - as long as you are heavy handed with the resin you can always sand the resin layer flat and polish that (which is the way I did it)
I'm sorry but I've seen the results and they are perfectly smooth, vacume forming is expensive anyway
You can always fake it. Here's carbon-fiber decal film: http://www.decalkits.com/carbonfiber.html James Wilson Dallas, TX
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight like i said no disrespect, but its a BTCH to try to get an absolute perfect sheet without vacumm molding I had 20 feet of this stuff and was about to drop 50 bucks to buy two large panes of glass to get a super flat sheet, but in the end i paid my friend 30 bucks to laminate 10 feet of it and it turned out decent. Ive made 2 small pieces using two pieces of glass and they turned out great, but i cant imagine doing this and getting no airbubles on a piece larger than 2 feet by 2 feet
there are a million places online to buyu CF. Google for carbon fiber cloth. It's not that hard to work with. Making sheets is pretty easy. My technique was this: Materials: 2 pieces of glass thicker the better. Window glass might break when trying to seperate. Carbon fiber cloth Resin 4 spacers (I used nuts (as in nuts and bolts) that were 1/8" thick) paintbrush (disposable) 1. Clean the glass 2. Wax the glass (any auto wax) 3. Apply a thick layer of resin to the glass 4. add cloth 5. add resin 6. repeat. (I want to say I used 14 layers for 1/8") 7. add resin to second piece of glass (waxed also) 8. place ontop of layered cloth/resin with spacers in corners. 9. Use some type of thin wedge to seperate the glass from the now solid sheet of CF. This is the tricky part, and thin glass will break before the bond is broken. I've done this with fiberglass, and it sucks trying to pull the pieces off. for any other shape you have to build some sort of skeleton, or a mold. I prefer to build a skeleton for most things. Then cover it with speaker grill cloth pulled tightly. This gives you a good shape to add layers of CF cloth to. You will have to sand and polish in the end to get a perfectly smooth surface, but it's alot easier than trying to build perfect molds, etc. Also... For any cut edges, use krazy glue, or any type of CA glue to seal them.
can i see some of your end products ?? also where did you get your CF i managed to get mine for 12 bucks of a guy on ebay.. alas hes not selling anymore.
LOL, I wish I could show you. All of my flat stock parts were for RC cars, and have all been sold, thrashed, or packed away in my garage for quite some time now. The built up (non) parts I've done were actually fiberglass, or fiberglass kevlar mix, and are all in cars covered in vinyl, or carpet. It's funny how guys will put 60 pound subwoofers in a car and want exotic composite enclosures to save weight. I might have a chunk of fiberglass flat stock laying around inside. I'll try to dig it up today. edit: sorry, forgot ... I got mine from uscomposites.com, and also from ebay. Every once in a while someone will unload extra that they didn't need for a project or something. I've only gone through a few yards of CF. I used it when I was racing and needed a part that noone else made yet.
