Fibre Glass, Carbon Fibre.... How tos? / Where tos?

[Inane]

Anyone got any experience with getting fibre glass "Stuff" made up?

(either fibre glass or carbon fibre)

like where you can go to get a panel made out of fibre glass, or whether its very hard to do yourself?

etc.?

[ChaosAD]

If you want to try it yourself then take a look at this site:
http://www.fibreglast.com/phpBB2/

[Ebola_One]

I've done it, it's messy & pretty easy.

PM if you like & I'll try & give you some tips.

Fibreglas that is, I've been wanting to try some carbon fibre.

[Jools]

You have to bake carbon fibre in a special oven if memory serves me correct. Doesnt sound like a home type job

[trueno]

What do you want to build?

With carbon, you are looking for strength with minimum weight, so the methods are important. There is an ideal ratio of resin to carbon, and it's not alot of resin.

My dad works with carbon (boats) and he bakes it under vaccum, It's pretty simple to do but you need a decent vaccum pump, a vaccum cleaner wont cut it, it doesnt have to shift alot of air but it has to drop the pressure significantly. This draws the resin out of the carbon and compacts everything, it also removes air bubbles to a certain extent. the resin he's been using recently was baked at ~50'C

It's not hard to do but for good results (ie strong and light) you need to do it properly. If you just want it to look like carbon then it doesnt matter, but carbon is horribly expensive, you could build a fibreglass piece and cover it with layer of carbon.

For things like F1 they use basically the same process, except they stick everything inside a pressure vessel to apply more pressure (~5 bar I think) this basically just draws more resin out so that it weighs less. because of the finer tolerances and extreme pressures, the moulds that they use are also of a much higher quality, it's expensive stuff.

[Pies]

i got a mate who does fibre glassing and carbon fibre work. will try and remember the name of the pace for ya its in wingate, the guys name is zack. peradx will know who im talkin about

[Inane]

cool let me know when you remember his name.

and no I definately dont want the "look"


in fact, If I do go ahead with carbon fibre, I'll be doing my utmost to conceal the fact

[blitza]

you want a cf ring piece or what? i have a mould for a monster one.