Making your own CF parts?

Has anyone made any carbon fiber parts on thier own? This seems feasible even if the quality will not be up to the commercial houses.

Doing a part that will look good in the end is the hard part. If you know how to work fiberglass, it's not that harder.

It would probably be tootime consuming just to do one part. You first have to have an original part or a model part to mold off of, then make a mold, then pat the CF or glass. Just not worth it IMO just for personal parts, but if you were going to sell parts that is a different story.

I was looking at getting into it myself. Not looking to make money on the stuff. Just do some one off items for my bike. But I am a perfectionist and not quite sure I would be happy with the results, although practice makes perfect I guess. The hardest part is keeping the pattern of the weave straight and smooth, so that your finished piece looks good. No waves, or uneveness in the pattern. If your gonna paint the parts it does'nt matter then.

Good points but I am thinking of it for 3 reasons:
1) Make a heat sheild for the RC between the pipe and rear shock. I have heard header wrap weakens the exhaust. Also the heat is bad on the shock (I can feel it on my boot at track duty) I don't know of anyone that makes a solution.
2) Potential bling factor of hand made custom CF
3) A neat project and having a 'geek' factor that no Blue Sheep can resist

More power to ya.

[luvtolean]

I did a bunch of wet layup in college. As jetdude says, it's no different from fiberglass. Mix resin with hardener, and slop it in. It's messy, itchy, and bad for your health. To do it properly, you also need a vaccum pump and bag to pull a vacuum while it cures. This, along with a decent mold, will allow you to reduce "pinholing", areas where resin doesn't fully penetrate.

Make sure you get your plug very well finished, waxed and ready to go. It's a bitch to get your part to release if you don't.

If you use "pre-preg", as in, pre-impregnated with resin, all you have to do is bake it. A blue m oven (I'll guess you have these at work) will work great, and if not, for small bits, I recommend a toaster oven. DO NOT try to cure CF parts in your home oven.

Personally, I think you should wrap the header.

Explain health? I assume I use ribber gloves and a real well ventilated area.

goggles, respirator, tyvex suit, etc

Originally Posted by sheepofblue

Explain health? I assume I use ribber gloves and a real well ventilated area.

You got it. Plenty of ventilation. If not you'll be as hi as a freakin' kite. Although I'm not sure about the ribber gloves, but the rubber ones work good.

Check the second one down looks ready made for sheep based design

[luvtolean]

bling bling

Also, if you do layers for strength, offset them 45 degrees. This will improve strength in all axis, carbon is not isotropic.

Sheep,
I have a friend (Jim McNear) who works in the composite business. Here's a link to his forum.

www.compositeforum.werksberg.com

To quote him "they are making everything out of Carbon Fiber, even toilets!"
Fig

Thanks there is some interesting looking stuff there.

I know a guy that runs a shop locally and he made his own cf tank for an rs250 and did not bake it. He told me you didn't really have to bake it, although it certainly helps. It's only been a couple of months so I don't know how it's held up. Of course he could have just gotten a really nasty buzz from the fumes and not known what he was doing...

[luvtolean]

If you're going to mess around with CF and oil or gas, you need a special resin. The "normal" stuff will not work.

[luvtolean]

BTW Sheeply, we used Hexcel stuff.

http://www.hexcel.com/

We chose a resin that was flexible for crash resistance. The downside was that it was kind of milky looking cured, so it wasn't quite so nice looking unpainted.

The baking seems to be to cure the epoxy. Some become more heat resistant based on curing temperature.

[luvtolean]

Originally Posted by sheepofblue

The baking seems to be to cure the epoxy. Some become more heat resistant based on curing temperature.

It is true in wet lay-up you don't have to bake. (but you should bag if you're interested in strength) This was why we were using it, we didn't have access to ovens large enough for our parts.

Pre-preg must be baked however.

I've done a bunch of carbon parts for my racing bicycles. All wet-layup, no pump. If you're looking to do a few parts, it's very cheap and easy (with some practice). A bunch of parts is probably a lot more expensive to do it right, while if you're going to have a business, tons of carbon is just done in Asia and resold. Most icycle carbon comes from Singapore, China, etc. not Italy, France, and the US like it's labelled.

As far as respirator is concerned, you only need a mask if you're grinding the stuff (if you're sanding, wet sand it). You won't kick up any dust with simple shears. Venthilation is required for the resins and since it's fall now, you'll need to pay careful attention to the temps your resins cure at. Low temperatures will retard or inhibit curing.

You'll probably be getting whatever fiber you can find, but if you're doing complex contours then the weave and weight of the fiber will make the difference. I think I've got about 3HS (can't remember the weight) in my garage which works for just about everything I've tried.

I don't know about rubber gloves, but I'm pretty sure latex is bad. I tend to use disposable vinyl gloves instead. As a release material, I've had excellent luck with the rolls of thin plastic "painters mask" available at Home Depot (only for informal molding). It allows for compaction, outgassing, and the surfaces are almost ready for additional bonding (no blushing, etc.)

Making parts look good really isn't a big problem. Whatever you get after it's molded/trimmed/shaped, hit it with like 120 or 150 wet sandpaper and then reapply a smooth coat of resin once or twice.