Starting your own car parts biz ? CF makers help, for school project.
12-11-02, 01:01 AM
#1
Full Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Arkansas
Posts: 201
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Starting your own car parts biz ? CF makers help, for school project.
My class is writing a report on starting you own business. I chose Making CF parts, or other various materials. Could anyone Please give me Matierials costs, other costs to start making the product, etc. anything else to do with Starting your business.
Thanx for any help givin.
Mods: Please don't move this post, I posted here because most CF makers in thier own business seem to most abundant in this section of the forum. Also so i can easily find this page tommorow at school.
Thanx for any help givin.
Mods: Please don't move this post, I posted here because most CF makers in thier own business seem to most abundant in this section of the forum. Also so i can easily find this page tommorow at school.
Last edited by TriTurboGen3 RX-7; 12-11-02 at 01:14 AM.
12-11-02, 06:05 PM
#4
I'm bastardizing my car!
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Naperville, IL.
Posts: 1,258
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
price for a typical use 5.7oz CF fabric is around $30 a yard, thats 60" wide... i usually gets cheaper when you buy bulk.
Then your going to need resins. Epoxy is the best and most expensive. West Systems is a real poupler company that makes some. its around $50 a gallon... then you need to get their hardner too and thats pretty expensive, but you use less. Other type of resins are called Polyester Resins; these are cheaper but dont have as good as performance as Epoxy.
theres also facrics that come with resin preinpregnated they are simply called prepregs. These are pretty expensive, but offer the best results. It offers areospace/formula one quality, and has the best fabric raito. If you use a prepreg fabric, you need a special oven called an 'autoclave' to use it. An autoclave thats of usable size is going to cost huge bucks...
then you need another set of resins for molds, unless you want to waste your $$$$ expoxy on it. So you would usually get a tooling polyester resin.
you would use these things above to make 'high quality' CF. for the mass market stuff, you might use Chopped Strand glass or just fiberglass cloth as a 'filler' behind one or 2 layers of CF fabric to keep costs down.
what chopped strand is, is a spool of fiberglass thats blown though a gun that powered by a compressor. The gun chops up the glass as it goes through and sprays it on whatever your makin. The guy thats making CF hoods for our cars posted some pictures of someone making a mold out of choped strand. Its really efficent as far as speed goes, but the end result is pretty crappy and heavy. You get a bad fiber to resin raito with it.
orther thigns you would need are core materials, release agents and tools for making molds. then theres the vaccume bagging equpment if you want to do that.
i think how most "production" CF parts are made is like this.
Its probably a polyester resin with 1 or 2 layers of CF that has a foam core then backed with fiberglass. I really dont know what type of resin a lot of places use, but i guess polyester since its so much cheaper.
some people say its a crime to use CF in polyester resin...
hope this helps.
Then your going to need resins. Epoxy is the best and most expensive. West Systems is a real poupler company that makes some. its around $50 a gallon... then you need to get their hardner too and thats pretty expensive, but you use less. Other type of resins are called Polyester Resins; these are cheaper but dont have as good as performance as Epoxy.
theres also facrics that come with resin preinpregnated they are simply called prepregs. These are pretty expensive, but offer the best results. It offers areospace/formula one quality, and has the best fabric raito. If you use a prepreg fabric, you need a special oven called an 'autoclave' to use it. An autoclave thats of usable size is going to cost huge bucks...
then you need another set of resins for molds, unless you want to waste your $$$$ expoxy on it. So you would usually get a tooling polyester resin.
you would use these things above to make 'high quality' CF. for the mass market stuff, you might use Chopped Strand glass or just fiberglass cloth as a 'filler' behind one or 2 layers of CF fabric to keep costs down.
what chopped strand is, is a spool of fiberglass thats blown though a gun that powered by a compressor. The gun chops up the glass as it goes through and sprays it on whatever your makin. The guy thats making CF hoods for our cars posted some pictures of someone making a mold out of choped strand. Its really efficent as far as speed goes, but the end result is pretty crappy and heavy. You get a bad fiber to resin raito with it.
orther thigns you would need are core materials, release agents and tools for making molds. then theres the vaccume bagging equpment if you want to do that.
i think how most "production" CF parts are made is like this.
Its probably a polyester resin with 1 or 2 layers of CF that has a foam core then backed with fiberglass. I really dont know what type of resin a lot of places use, but i guess polyester since its so much cheaper.
some people say its a crime to use CF in polyester resin...
hope this helps.
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
smikels
2nd Generation Specific (1986-1992)
3
08-18-15 01:26 PM
rx8volks
Canadian Forum
0
08-11-15 10:30 PM
