Hi. I am working on the final stage of my first carbon fiber skinning project. I used all XRC products and carbon from easy composites and the process went smoothly. I did do some of the early sanding with a random orbital sander at 240 grit. I then wet sanded by hand using circular motions from 400 up to 3000. At that stage, the product looked really good, but had a dull, matte finish. I don't recall having any noticeable swirl marks at that time, but it is possible they just weren't visible.

Anyways, today I did the polishing. I did all polishing using pads that I also bought on easy composite and attached to my random orbital sander. I started with the NW1 super cutting compound ( black ), then used the TopFinish 2 ( black ), and then finished it off with the EasyGloss.

Below is the final result. As you can see, there are a lot of swirl marks. I'm not really sure how to proceed now. Should I just try a second round of polishing? Should I go all the way back to the sanding stage? Should I give it another coat of resin? Or should I spray it with some automotive clear coat? I have the clear coat and wouldn't mind doing that, but would that fill in the swirl marks? I don't want to spray it and then regret it.

What do you guys with experience recommend?

Thanks!

Also worth waiting until the part has been post cured before doing any finishing work as the post curing process itself can cause a bit more print due to shrink back.  Post curing in the mould will reduce that and reduce the chance of distortion, but it is always very hard to get a perfect finish.  

Warren Penalver
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Support Assistant

That EVO 9 roof from that "shed door" picture was far from perfect i just got it leveled befor it got a lick of paint



Post cure will speed up epoxy shrinkage (idea is to get it as close to final form befor doing any corrections) so parts besides being mechanical supperior will print trough a lot less in the future.

All my tool are shiny as fu*k but i never got perfectly flat piece out of it after post cure.


...... and part from this tool....