Hi,

Could you advise on the most suitable epoxy adhesive for bonding carbon fibre laminate to aluminium (1000 series).
And what is the best way to prepare the surfaces for joining.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,
Allan

I would recommend our ET538 Honeycomb Bonding Epoxy Adhesive as it is very good for bonding aluminiums to carbon, however all the epoxy based adhesives will bond aluminium to carbon no problem with slight property differences dependant on the adhesive type.

Warren Penalver
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Support Assistant

This might be impractical but might be useful to know. For high-end applications (eg aircraft), metal to matting bond has to be special. Metal expands at about 5 X the carbon-carbon surface.
You take existing matting and coat with a thin epoxy layer, add another single layer of cloth. That is then cured at about 500 deg C in low oxygen. It leaves a porous surface - we're talking a tenth of a millimetre depth.
The fibres of that surface are coated with metal, but not so the holes are filled. There are various ways to do this, such as a type of electroplating. Then the surface can be brazed onto the metal.
This gives a stronger and stiffer bond than the metal.

(I'm looking for a shortcut!)