Hi, do you have any images of a cured part using the red poly/carbon twill please?

The red in my current fabric goes very dark once wetted and cured. I need something that maintains a bright red. I've found a fabric in the US but would be best not to import it.

Cheers

Hi,

All the coloured fabrics go darker when they're wet through with resin (for just the same reason that blond or red hair goes darker when it's wet). The colour of what's behind makes the biggest difference.

I can't think how any other cloth could be different but I can say that with our coloured fabrics you need to be prepared for the coloured fibres to go darker when they're wetted through/laminated.

Best regards, Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

Blue and green didnt change that much at all but red almost disappeared.

So to create a light back ground would it mean creating the initial CF part with a white pigment in the resin and then to wrap the the part in the red CF?

Or lose the white pigment but use a white backing coat for the red CF to be wrapped?

Either way i dont see a way to avoid wrapping

Thats almost what im looking for. Nice work! I used CF for the backing so probably reduced the colour

What im really looking for is that of the seat cowl

This is indeed more red than my part, could also be the reflection of the sun on the part, don't know.

I too wondered if it was the reflection from the sunlight (that is a very bright day that the seat cowl was photographed in) but I have a hunch that it is because it's a different type of fibre altogether. Our coloured hybrid fabrics used coloured polyester as the coloured tows and carbon of course for the rest. Because the polyester yarns are slightly transparent, when they get wet they go darker because the colour of what's behind comes through more. I think the cowl in the photograph might use something more like a red alufibre rather than a red polyester. Because alufibre is opaque (although reflective) it will not darken to the same extent when it's wetted out. One's not better or worst than the other, they're just different fibres behaving in different ways.

Although we stock Alufibre, we don't stock coloured versions of it or hybrids using it.

One thing I have know customers do is use Alufibre as the reinforcement and then use coloured 'candy lacquers' over the top to tint the alufibre. What you end up with is something looking like red, blue or gree carbon fibre. House of Kolor (HoK) do these candy lacquers.

--All the best, Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

Im told its kevlar. Im trying to get hold of some from the US but they've stopped replying to emails.

Thanks for the information, looks true by seeing images on the internet of "Red Kevlar" 

Matthieu Libeert
Founder MAT2 Composites X Sports
website: www.mat2composites.com