currently building a porsche 944 turbo track car, and after seeing some other projects where people have made there own carbon products, it got me looking into it. once tooled up you can produce pretty much anything in carbon fibre after making the moulds. there is pretty much nothing out there for the porsche 944, so i started to think about producing my own products. the inital start up costs for equipment is quite expensive, but nothing crazy, and once set up, the materials are very reasonable. for certain you could produce carbon products for next to nothing compared to buying products off the shelf, as long as you are willing to spend the time doing it on top of that of course as a buisness once we have hopefully learned how to carry out the process with success, we could offer custom carbon products in the future something i am certainly thinking about! has any1 got any experience or done this kind of thing themselves? thanks nick
I made moulds for honda b series spark plug covers and made a batch of them to cover the cost of the materials. i used a pump from an old aircon machine and followed a few youtube videos for the first trial and after getting the hang of it its easy. i should start making them again because all it takes is time. all you need to know is treat the mould like a baby and care for it or anything you produce will look awful.
yeah like u say its all in the mould! what i dont understand at the minute is how you would make something more 3d, such as a rear spoiler, do u have to make it in 2 parts and then join together? would love to produce carbon bonnet/doors/roof/rear 1/4 panels, doorcards/dash/wings etc for the track car!
Its too tricky to say in advance mate as obviously every product is different. At this level the easiest way to do it would probably be to mould it in 2 halves and then bond it together. Using the correct materials the bond will be stronger than the carbon. We used to use scotch-weld 2 part stuff where i used to work with carbon. We make carbon super cars where i am now so i could try and get a spec if you want. The difficulty is the tooling/moulds and know where to have joins and where and how to place tooling within the mould. Hopefully this will become more obvious when the buck is made. The key when doing this on a small scale is keeping the mould strong, we used to just fibreglass 2x4 wood into the moulds. Otherwise it will warp or flex from temperature and pressure. The key to a good finish is the quality of the inside of the mould and also good release agent. Though what we used to do was just wax polish the inside of the mould as it has the same effect.
One of my best friends txt me today strangely to say he was starting to make bike parts in carbon fibre. He used to work at a composite place that made all sorts of crazy carbon stuff, from initial mould to finished product, his problem so far is that he only has his garage to do it in so can't currently do anything as big as a bonnet etc! Im looking at possibly designing some cool shit and getting him to make it for me
I looked into it a little while ago but got a little put off because I couldn;t find anywhere that I could buy carbon twill over 1.2m wide. I bought a fibreglass bonnet and was planning to make a mold and then make carbon versions. From my homework, I worked out that resin infusion was the best method for making good strong panels without any voids or bubbles on the surface. And also look at making an oven. When I say oven I don't mean a giant kitchen oven. It doesn't need to get that hot. But you would be surprised what a difference curing at 40c makes to curing time and overall strength. And the hotter you can cure, the quicker and stronger you can make things. I was just going to use some cellotex sheets to make and oven and heat with some halogen lamps and a fan. All the heat/cure time information should be available from the resin manufacturer. I read an earlier edition of this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Competition...r_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350289986&sr=1-12 Very technical but interesting.
Agreed with JKP. For small parts we made a makeshift oven by covering an upturned table with the plastic bagging material and putting 2 or 3 fan heaters in there. Got it to around 70 degrees which can help alot. I would say that without more knowledge you shouldnt be trying to make anything thats actually structural though. All the home made parts i have made were for a carbon body on a space frame chassis so a thumbsuck for strength was fine. Loads on the bottom of the front bumper, doors needed cork core etc etc. But the carbon chassis we have where i am now are in another league.
A family member used to run a carbon fibre yacht mast factory and I've done it with fibreglass before.. Pm me if you have a question and il happily forward it onto him
I currently have guys at 3 F1 teams and a load of others building LMP cars, as well as aero, marine and wind manufacture ........... if you think startup costs for carbon manufacture arent that much youve been talking to the wrong people We did a little exercise a few years ago and IIRC found we needed to sell at least 65 copies of Phils S14a bonnet to break even using autoclaved prepreg carbon, that was mainly as I had access to a clave and a load of skilled workers. Your only option would realisticaly be to team up with an existing manufacturing company and use their tooling and people but sell the parts on yourself If you choose to use heat cure stuff then the quality will be noticeably reduced, and the weight noticeably increased which defeats the object of using CF in the first place. Ask yourself why there isnt carbon body panels available for mainstream cars ........... drop me a mail if you want more info
Why? From the research I did, you could pretty much use normal resins but you get a faster and more complete cure when the temperature is increased. I'm not talking 200°c, just like 40°-70°c. The figures were like cure time reduced from 8hours to 2 hours and a 70% strength increased to 90% due to a better catalytic reaction.
hi thanks for all the response! docwra there is a great difference in the requirements of the average joe doing track/drift/race projects over industry standard composite production for f1/aerospace/marine use! and of course the costs involved in setting up for those applications would be huge! but for people after carbon products at a sensible price there are much cheaper ways and methods that still produce very good quality products. i have seen in the flesh carbon products that have been created with resin injection vaccum systems that look very good quality and are very light compared to the equivalent steel part. in fact they were a lot better quality than the majority of off the shelf products that can be bought which cost silly money! i know a few chaps that work for a composite buisness that supply the majority of the f1 grid with composite parts. i have chatted with them and they have given me valuable info and advise on getting into composites on a sensible budget, that will give results that easily meet the requirements of the usual customer. tbh this is mainly something i have an interest in myself, and would love to have a go at producing some custom parts for my track project, if any extra work comes of it once im up to scratch, thats just a bonus! thinking of doing a composites course in jan to get to grips with the basics and go from there cheers
should be learning about making carbon products soon, studying a composites course at uni, only just started with fibreglass and already making a mould for some small race style mirrors, but like you say is all in the time of making the mould, once you've got it how you want it you come make something like a bonnet vent in 4 hours. someone's actully made a copy a lot like the driftworks universal one so have to get a copy of it as far as complex design it can be made in multiple sections and moulded together, are lecturer makes speedboats from scratch so any info i get ill post it up on here
Best of luck Its not easy lol! Temp's are crucial it seems. Up here in Scotland, - temps' dont work at all.. We've been having issues with certain resins and mixes. If your going pre-preg that would be far better, however again setup isnt cheap. Nor the oven.
resin injection systems will cure happily at room temperature, but an oven will help speed things up a bit. i have a bodyshop next door with automotive oven that will operate at 40 degrees without issue, which would see full cure within 4-5 hours. pre preg is great, but it becomes uneconomical unless your doing very large scale manufacture. the core materials cost 3-5 times as much as carbon sheet with resin, materials require storage in a freezer, and for best results an autoclave is required which is mega money. there are systems of pre preg out there that will cure in a vacum bag outside of an autoclave, but will still require cooking at over 100 celcius. and even then these systems are not garenteed to give a pin hole/void free finish. i can almost garentee a lot of off the shelf carbon products will not be manufactured from pre preg carbon. the costs of pre preg materials alone, mean that any item such as front wings/bonnets/bootlids etc will cost much more than the £500-£600 costs that they can be had for off the shelf. pre preg sheet is £60-100 per sq meter, and a sq meter doesnt get you far when creating large panels such as the above, especially with 2 skins etc. when it comes to creating aerospace/f1/marine/military composites, then yes of course an autoclave and pre preg will be used. but the costs will be massive. dry carbon sheet with resin injection and supporting materials cured in a vacum will give results sufficient for anyone apart from those with special requirements, strengths/weights to be met that are critical for the use they are manufactured for. for someone looking for a cost effective solution to lightweight body panels, dashboards, centre consoles, mirrors, spoilers, battery boxes etc etc, a resin injection system is perfect. i have seen many very impressive and very lightweight, intricate/large panels made with this method with awsome results. at the end of the day you get what you pay for, and although pre preg is the best method, it is also the most costly by far. i doubt anyone on this forum would be interested in paying £1k plus for a bonnet that may be associated with pre preg costs, but if they can have a resin injection bonnet for 500-600 oe less, which is 85% as light and strong, and is perfectly fit for the use intended, then im sure they would be more interested at that sort of price bracket. its all down to your target market and the investment to return ratio. if i was an all out composites specialist company, then it may be worth investing the £30k plus that would be needed to get set up with pre preg equipment, but then i would have to charge a lot more to make a return on the investment. something that a lot of my target audience would not be willing to pay for. or i invest £3-5k in a decent resin injection system that gets me up and running and produces decent products at a fair and reachable price for average joe. it allows me to create custom carbon products for all my own projects at sensible costs, and also gives people a chance to have custom carbon products produced without paying the mega money that comes with pre preg items. you also have to remember i am totally new to this! i have to start somewhere, and a massive investment into something i dont know if i will be any good at, or might hate doing it etc, would be a massive waste of time and money. if i dont get on with it at least with the standard system, i can sell the kit and carry on with life! for the minute its just an idea, and i need to do far more research into the whole process. i bought a book on motorsport composites today, so will give that a read, and thinking of doing a 3 day course in jan which we give me an insight and some practical experience, then we can go from there! cheers again for everyones advise all interesting stuff
Good luck on the course man. I've been looking into doing exactly what you'r doing for a couple of years. But not as a business. Just to make stuff for myself and then sell enough to cover the cost of the item so I get free stuff. Although, once you have the mould, it's not massive work to make more. Keep us updated with how you get on. I am genuinely interested...
cheers. tbh at this stage its just an interest and a possibility. i want to do a bit more research and gain some good knowledge of the methods before commiting to anything. and even if i do get tooled up, i doubt i would be selling stuff for a while as i would need to have a play about first. as you have said, as much as anything else it would be awsome to be able to create carbon panels for my track car. if some extra buisness came of it, then thats a bonus. will see how things go and keep people updated cheers
I know everybody is talking about the mould and producing parts, but remember.... the plug for the mould still requires most of the attention! so a nice finished plug to take a mould off is essential. As for split-lines when making moulds in parts, it comes from practice and experience on where to judge to put them. I find working with carbon fibre from the old fashioned 'wet-layup' is extremly difficult and vacuum is the way forward... if you have access to it! I agree that pre-preg carbon would be the way to go to keep costs down, but if the parts are purely for aesthetic purposes and not functional purposes, it might be worth while using cheaper resin like a water-clear Polyester? but using Polyester resin will cause the parts to be very brittle and become heavier (possibly) otherwise, just use an epoxy system, costs more, takes longer to cure, but has its benefits. I think your right in taking a look at doing a short course on it as it will answer your questions and open up some knowledge and wisdom around it all. If your going to sell these carbon parts and take the 'Pikey' approach by backing the carbon with stranded glass, i think you should reflect that in your prices, because theres nothing more that riles me about how much carbon parts manufacturers rip people off. Hope it goes well though and you fetch some good tips! Jords
