Hi Everyone!

I am just about to  start my first resin infusion project but come up with some question I need to get answer before.

The project is just  a carbon fibre cylinder 110cm long by 15cm width by 1cm thick

How many layers of carbon do I need and how many slow infusion resin would I need?

Which would be the best and cheapest  way to get that thickness?Using x2 lantor soric between two layers of carbon on each side? In this case how to calculate the amount of resin do I need?

The aim is to get a part as cheap , light and strong as possible.

Than k you very much in advance for all your answer.

best regards

1cm thick is very thick.  Almost certainly you want to be looking at thicker carbon fibres like the 650gsm.  Whichever fibre you choose, the fibre spec normally shows the thickness and hence you can work out how many layers you need. You could well try replacing a few mm with a core such as Soric. 

Working out the  resin quantity can be done using the equations and table in the  Resin Infusion Starter kit instructions


Warren Penalver
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Support Assistant

That´s amazing Warren Thank you so much, I will post my project here if it goes well.

Much appreciated

Keith bontrager once said about composites: "light, cheap, strong, choose two". If there would be a setup that was as lightest, cheapest and strongest as possible, everybody would use it.
For your question we would need at least an brief idea, what you are planning to do with it. Does it only need to be dimensional stable? If so, a layer on each side of a 10mm soric would be already more than enough. Do you want to build a structural part for immense axial loads? If so, soric would be a bad idea. Would glass fibre already suit your needs?

haha Nice one from Bontrager! If I would have to choose from those three for my project I would go for cheap and light. My aim is to build a snare drum so not many structural forces are involve. I will prototype with glass fibre and then try with some layers of soric to reduce cost once done in carbon. Does that make sense? 1cm will be the thickest, but i am not sure whether use soric or maybe nomex honeycomb...

With nomex will be lighter but more time consuming,. With soric I would be able to do the part in one go. Am I right?

Thanks you very much oekmont for the time to answer me, much appreciated

110x15cm Sounds more like an octoban than a snare.
I my opinion, you do not take the most important factor into consideration. The sound. The lightest snare would have the greatest "attack, for sure, but dampening and self resonances will be important even more. For example a monolithic carbon ply would produce a metal like sound, where a soric sandwich tends to be much "woodier". A honeycomb sandwich (a really light one" has sort of a corrugated cardboard sound, wich might not be that pleasant for a snare

Thats a great step forward Oekmon, I´m doing this as a first step and wanting to discover the sound changes as I progress and use different materials. Would you think is a good idea to start with a 3mm thickness glass fibre one?

Thank mate

One last question please,

Does it take the same amount of resin 3 layers of 200gr than 1 layer of 600gr?

Yes, resin consumption is just a question of volume (thickness x high of the snare x diameter of the snare (minus thickness of the wall to be accurate) x pi) x resin content (around 0.5). Plus resin for additional materials, like hoses, flow mesh and peel ply. The actual layup only plays in, if it changes the resin content, or the thickness.

I made myself a set of spread tow twill carbon octobans. I tested two layups. One was a layer of said carbon plus 3mm glass reinforcement. The other one was carbon plus 600g glass, then 3mm coremat (wich dampens the tone more than soric) and 600g glass.
For the octobans I preferred the monolithic layup, as it had more sustain (but a little less attack) than the sandwich layup.
Since then I made quite a big infused ply library. Around 120 differnt layups.
Although sound was not the primary factor, I got some inside in that topic.
-carbon has a faster response, but less sustain that glass of equal thickness. This might be because of the lower density.
-solid laminates got significantly higher sustain than sandwich laminates
- closed cell foam, pet core, soric lrc, soric sf, coremat is the ranking from most to least sustain.
-solid carbon comes closest to a steel plate
-soric sf with carbon skins comes the closest to hardwood
-coremat 2mm with carbon skins is the closest i found to slow grown spruce. Thicker coremat takes away much of the tonal brilliance, and sounds dull.