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Group: Forum Members
Posts: 2,
Visits: 8
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Hi All,
Just registered yesterday. I've been looking at this forum for quite a while, mainly because I am interested inmaterials in general but also because I've been thinking about making my own carbon fiber parts.
First some general introduction about myself maybe. I studied chemistry (engineer) and wrote my thesis about flax fiber reinforced plastics (back in the days when this was a novelty) so I have arather good idea of the theory behind composite materials. Besides this, my big hobby is biking, I've raced MTB, road and even did a bit of trial. I also enjoy building my own bikes (that means everything including wheel building etc ...) but until now, I only used commercially available parts. By building this bikes,I became more and more disappointed about some parts, so I decided to build them myself out of carbon fiber. This "thinking about building my own parts" started about 1 year ago.
To give you an idea of the parts I am wanting to build, I want to make a one piece carbon fiber mudguard and a one piece chain guard too. In this regard I must add that I am only concerned about performance gains (weight/functionality), cosmetics is the least of my concern.I've never won a beauty contest with my bike and I never will.
So the questions I have now are:
- Do I need a positive or a negative mold?
- Should I use prepreg or wet layup ?Are there any differences in strength of the finished product ?
- I think vacuum bagging is too complicated for this kind of more complex parts, no ? Is it necessary to use vacuum bagging or can I go with curing in ambient air ?
Oh and apologies for the bad English, it's not my first language.
Regards,
Ivan
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