Carbon Fibre

Anyone had any experience of working with this? Is it basicly just the same
as fibreglass, without the stippling?...

Try as I might, I cant find anywhere on the net that gives idiot proof
instructions and tips on how to mould carbon fibre.

All I want to do is reinforce a laptop lid that got broken, and spruce it up
with a thin sheet of carbon fibre sheet and some nice strong epoxy resin..

Any tips people?

And if anyone knows of somewhere thats cheaper than this for small
quantities.. let me know!

http://www.carbonology.com/shop.asp?PC_ID=3187&pf_id=78&sec_id=2116

 

Antonye is your man for this. No doubt he'll be along shortly.

 

Pip already answered this.

As I understand it, no. I seem to recall that CF needs autoclaving, or
at least, cooking, to get it to set properly - BICBW.

 

in my modelling days [1] we used to buy carbon fibre ribbon on a reel
you could wrap these around wings etc to produce strength at known weak
points
Cannot remember what was used to fix the ribbon in place, but I'm sure most
good model shops
would be albe to help

[1] thats planes not catwalks

 

Heh.

I've done some work with carbon fibre and if you've
done any fibreglass work then it is no different to
working with sheet glass fibre rather than chopped.
Carbon tends to "pull" apart though, making it difficult
to press the air out with a roller, and you'll mess up
the weave. Same can happen with a stippling brush
if you're not careful.

Getting good results is a real problem though, as
to get good flat sheets you really need to make
up a decent press and then start messing about
with vacuums to suck out all the air bubbles. It
really isn't worth the effort for very small quantities.

If all you need is a sheet that will be seen then buy
one off ebay. I bought a rectangular shaped one
about A5 size & 5mm thick for just over a tenner.
It arrived perfectly flat with a nice glossy finish and
was certainly worth the money. It made a lovely
dash on the race bike...
http://horrible.demon.co.uk/600-620/slides/Mmm ... carbon!.JPG

I emailed the bloke with the dimensions I required
and he cut it for me. All it needed was the edges
sanding and holes cutting.

If all you're going to do is reinforce something that
won't be seen then use plain ol' fibre sheet from
a Halfrauds glass-fibre repair pack, the yellow
box stuff, as that has everything you need. Once
dry you could even paint it black or something.
The weight difference and strength between this
and carbon will be negligible.

If you're looking to replicate a laptop lid/shell in
carbon fibre ... good luck! You'll spend years perfecting
your method and spend hundreds of pounds on
materials and equipment, by which time it would
have been cheaper to buy a new laptop and the
one you built the case for will be out of date anyway!

 

There are two methods for creating parts - wet lay and pre-preg.

Wet lay, as the name suggests, is where you take your
pieces of carbon cloth and then coat it in the resin and
lay it up around a mold. You then leave it to set. The
resins I've worked with (West) all cure without baking,
although they generate a hell of a lot of heat during curing!

Pre-preg is where the carbon cloth had had the resin
already impregnated into it. You lay up your cloth on
your mold, clamp it and and then bake it. The resin in
the cloth melts, binds the cloth parts together, and then
cures as the oven cools down. This is much more precise
as the amounts of resin are controlled, and usually ends up
with a better and more uniform finish.

 

<snip>

so, neither wrong, nor right, story of my life.

 

Did you confuse the word "lovely" with the words "fucking hideous"?

 

Only when describing you, flower.

 

Not require, no.

 

But to get the best performance from the expensive pre-preg,
autoclaving would be a way to go.

Not forgetting to let it warm to room temperature after its cold
storge, without getting it covered in condensation.

 

antonye came up with the following;:

One tip to help ... When you have a cut and sanded edge of carbon sheet, run
a small bead of superglue along the edge. Makes it look nicer but more
importantly stops the weave from fraying and weakening.

s'wot we do on our model car chassis ...

 

Hey, that's pretty groovy.