Carbon Fiber: UFO Quality Material

Carbon fiber has always captivated me. Its such a space age material, and when done right, it looks awesome. I’m fortunate to have owned a car or two with beautiful carbon fiber work, for example on the dashboard. I’ve always been interested in possibly making something out of the material, but have never had the time to learn.

Recently, a friend in the area has offered me a chance to swing by his workshop and see how he makes carbon fiber parts. He’s in the aviation business. Last night we trimmed the molds for some carbon fiber aircraft wingtips on my bandsaw and I’m going to get to see the vacuum bagging operation that puts carbon into place on these molds. Should be pretty cool, I’ll be sure to take plenty of pictures and write it up here.

The mold itself was a gorgeous piece of work. My friend uses a specialized CNC router to do the work, which is basically a lot of 3D profiling. The job ran for many hours with a 20 thousandths stepover on a 1/2″ ballnose endmill and came out looking great. The material he used was gorgeous too–heavy tooling foam. This is really a neat material, very high density, and contours well at 100-150 IPM with this CNC. It’s quite expensive though. The foam billet he cut the wingtip mold in to weighs about 60 lbs and cost $1200.

More on the carbon project soon, but meanwhile, here’s a great video I found over at Carbon Fiber Gear on the making of carbon fiber baseball bats:

Making Carbon Fiber Baseball Bats

 

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