Carbon fibre "vac bagging"

[AdeV]

Hello! 

I'm after learning how to do carbon fibre dry layup/vac bagging/resin infusion, to make race car parts & such like; mainly panels I suspect. Can anyone recommend a good book on the subject? So far, most of the glassfibre/carbon fibre books deal with wet layup, or briefly cover vac bagging carbon fibre which needs baking (I don't have a large enough oven to cook a big CF piece).

Supplies appear to be readily available here in the UK, there's even one company offering a "complete vac bagging starter kit" c/w resin, cloth, vac bag stuff, vacuum pup & fittings, which sounds rather good.

I guess instructibles & youtube will also be good learning resources.

[Brass_Machine]

Hi Ade,

No books, but plenty of videos. I will post up some links when I get to work.

Eric.

[vtsteam]

Also you might check in with the homebuilt/experimental aircraft crowd/forums/books. Lots of small scale high tech how-to lamination going on there.

[tekfab]

This lot aren't bad :  http://www.easycomposites.co.uk/Beginners-Guide-to-Out-of-Autoclave-PrePreg-Carbon-Fibre.aspx

Mike

[Brass_Machine]

This guy does a good series on youtube. **EDIT** same guy as tekfab listed.

Video 1.

FiberGlast has a learning center that has a ton of info. Specifically a video SERIES on bagging.

I have found that the instructables and maker crowd are a little less versed in good instruction when it comes to bagging.

Eric

[awemawson]

Excellent video - how does he keep his shirt so clean 

[Brass_Machine]

Make sure you watch the other 2

[dsquire]

Excellent video - how does he keep his shirt so clean 

awemawson

I think he must be cheating. Polishing a black mould with that type of polisher should leave a black horizontal stripe accross his spotless white shirt. 

Cheers 

Don

[awemawson]

Having watched all three videos, which are very informative and well presented, I shudder to think what that bonnet cost just in materials alone.

[Arbalist]

Plenty of stuff out there on wet layup. Not done much of it but wet layup with carbon fibre cloth tape was the same as using glass fibre reinforcement. As noted though the professionals use pre-preg which is a whole different ball game. Pre-preg is much less messy if you can use it but you have other problems with it like minimum order, refrigerated storage and higher cost etc.

[AdeV]

Cool, thanks! Those videos were a great find, and on a site I'd already briefly looked at (just for the price of CF mat as it happened.

Of course, one thing he didn't cover (crafty....) was what happens if your panel is larger than a single sheet of CF.....?

[Bigbadbugga]

thanks for sharing.

i just watched their video on carbon covering parts, might just get a kit to do the side trim and arch trims on the golf 

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