Has anyone in here made carbon fiber panels?

Flirting with the idea of making a carbon fiber wing. Does anyone in here have the know how?

Is it like glass? How expensive is it? Can it be done practically at home?

No, but I've seen the products in the shop where i get my fiberglas and expoxy materials. From what I've seen it is not to different from making fiberglas (could be wrong though) just different materials.

I intend to make my bumper reinforcements out of carbon before final assembly just to reduce the weight that far up front and in the back.

Hmmm, I thot I had heard that you had to use a mold or a form under pressure for CF. Don't know about Free Form work, seems like a vac press or the like would be needed. Interesting question tho.

TT posted a thread in the FAB section that shows a guy doing just that to a Mustang.
Check it out ........... pretty interesting.........:thumbs:

http://vettemod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=910

I'm pretty sure it's just like fiberglass if you don't use pressure or heat to cure it. No benefits other than the look

You need to vac. bag it and use honeycomb like that guy did to get weight and structural stiffness advantages. If for looks only uou could just make a mold, lay 1 layer of carbon and the rest glass or something. it'd look like the real deal but would be a lot cheaper. The carbon weaves are going for crazy money thanks to airbus.

Yellow73SB said:

I'm pretty sure it's just like fiberglass if you don't use pressure or heat to cure it. No benefits other than the look

Click to expand...

Only that it is considerably stronger resulting in the ability to make much thinner panels for reduced weight.

I personally seen a Dragster body that had hit the wall and the nose flexed inward
at least 12" or more and then returned to 95% of it's original shape.
How do I know 12"..........the support bar behind the nose was still bent.
There was stress damage but 20ft away it was hardly noticeable.

The same nose made out of GRP...........I'm sure you would have been picking up pieces off the track.

Heat is not required for production of all structural CF, as Reynard perfected a proprietary cold cure process in the late '90's which was first used in manufacture of the 98E spec full CF formula car chassis, such as the one I ran in the Dodge Pro Series. Don't have direct hands on experience, but I'm sure there have been many other such developments since.

Have you picked up a copy of "Fiberglass & Composite Materials" by Forbes Aird yet? Seems a good primer.

As SkunkWorks said, heat is not required. But if you want to get the most out of the carbon fiber you need to cure it in vacuum bag. Of course autoclave would be the best, but in carage facilities it is not possible for most of us. Vacuum bagging is not so hard though. We made few motorcycle parts for my friends bike in my carage few years ago. If I only had the time I would do some parts to my vette too. Maybe one day...

Here is one part made by us, the first we did...