Carbon Fiber Bodywork

Adam, I doubt that you have too much extra time in your mold. Even if you have a CNC machining center making a mold, it is not uncommon to spend weeks hand sanding and polishing. Just like doing a paint job, all of the important work is in the preparation. As you already know, getting the mold perfect is critical. Any imperfection in the mold is transferred to all of the parts produced. This is why I wind up machining numerous plastic parts at $125/hr. The cost of a mold is prohibitive for the kind of quantities that my company needs. Molds are very expensive because of all the finish work involved. You should be able to do the right side in about half the time since you will have your process down.

+1! for the Baja team we try to keep everything 2-d, but our mini formula team did a really sweat wet layup carbon fiber monocoque body, They easily spent 2 months with four people working 4-5 hours 5 days a week, but it turned out really awesome! to get a really good gloss finish they went back after it hardened and added several more coats of resin sanding in between coats, the finished product was pretty impressive.

hands on, seat of the pants learning here

So far that's all the knowledge I have too. I do know that those quarter turn fasteners can get pricey, but with just 3 or so on a side it shouldn't be too bad, luckily we had them left over from who knows when. I'll try to find some names of the companies we looked into. There were several different styles from cam lock type to the "T" quarter turn type. A quick search at Jegs looks like a package of 10 will run $20-25, but That's not so bad considering you'll have a few spares to play with.

I'm sure you're right Josh. I'll cut the right side molding time in half...maybe :blink: It will not take as much prep though, and thats where I'll save my time. Hell, I've got enough time in this one mold to have prepped and painted my bikes bodywork :pinch: :whistle: But hey, it's for the greater good, right? Incidently JustinZ, what personal project were you thinking of making in your class?

Now, back to the show!
This morning I had repaired a small corner of the flange that I had layed up the other day. I didn't take any pics of this....because it was boring and there wasn't anything to see. The important thing was that if I left the corner the way it was, the laminate in the mold would have been locked in :blush: Thats bad!

Once I fixed that little snaffu, I decided my new flange was a little too week to stand up to the stress of being pried against (demolding parts) and tossed around the garage. So I set about to stiffen it up a bit. I brought out my fiendish 4.5" angle grinder an reshapedd the expanding foam, as well as cleaned up the edges of the flange. Then I pre cut a bunch of fiberglass cloth, mixed some resin and began by adding 2 more layers of glass to the flange. the only difference was I added it to the backside of the new flange, like so

Once I got a couple more layers on the edge, I started laying larger pieces from the edge of thr flange up the side of the mold. This ties thw flange back to the mold with the foam in the middle

I believe that this will be sufficiently strong for the intended purpose. Tomorrow I'll clean it up, prep it and lay in the last of the tooling gelcoat. Then it's just a matter of resanding the patched areas. I should be ready for a test layup by tomorrow afternoon :woohoo:

TIP: When doing a wet layup like this on a non dedicated composite work bench (like this), lay down some wax paper. The resin doesn't bleed through to the bench top, and your parts don't stick to the wax paper

I was curious what cloth supplies I had on hand, so I dug them out for inventory review, and pictures
The bad news is I have a lot less carbon fiber than I thought

The good news is I already ordered more, and it should be here the end of next week. This will give me time to experiment with the mold using fiberglass

The good news is I have a couple yards of carbon/kevlar hybrid fabric (damn it's sexy! :woohoo: )

The bad news is I don't have a way to cut it yet, so it stays on the roll until I pony up the cash for the correct shears

Adam

very interesting....how are your titainium ignition key blanks coming along...

trianglelaguna wrote:

very interesting....how are your titainium ignition key blanks coming along...

:laugh: :laugh:

Keep up the good work Adam.

I'm thinking side covers and tail piece! this thread will be very helpful! From my experience taking time to get the mold right pays off bigtime! Keep it up!

trianglelaguna wrote:

very interesting....how are your titainium ignition key blanks coming along...

Almost as well as my call to Rob Muzzy about borrowing one of his titanium rod Kz cranks

Thanks Mark. Like Craig has pointed out, I'm working hard on a purely cosmetic endevor.

Justinz, that sounds like an ambitous, but certainly doable plan. You'll have the only Kz650 in the world with carbon bodywork!

touchy touchy.....hmphp.....i'm being serious for once....


i'm gonna run imported air from the alps on my project ....by ordering some swiss cheese and compressing the air out of it....

no one likes my ideas....nobody likes me...

Aww Craig, I think you're only serious in your own thread. I'm pretty sure no one has ever been serious about a titanium key blank. Incidently, the swiss cheese from Switzerland that I saw on "how its made" didn't have any holes in it. And how is that air going to be used in your project again? Maybe to help keep that euphoric high going that supports the "stock is best" point of view? :laugh: I wasn't arguing, just clarifying the truth in your post, I am working on a part that is just for looks, no other reason. Although, perhaps I should be looking to replicate MKII or Z1R side covers, as they seem to be in much shorter supply?