Increasing our Carbon Footprint

Not necessarily a good thing, but we are having some fun with carbon fibre on our project.  The end result might be a bit of "Mad Max", but we'll give it a try and see how it looks.

Rather than go with a traditional headlight, we are going to have a real "racer" look with a front number plate with a headlight cut into it, offset to one side.

Sorta like this...

However, we are starting with an oval numberplate shape, and using an aluminum one as a guide, we are going to replicate it in carbon fibre.  We came up with 2 options... one that uses a concave (female) mold, and another that uses a convex (male) mold.  We'd make 2, and see which one turns out best.  Prior to this meeting, Mr. S already made a female mold using fibreglass matt.

And we're off.  The pieces of carbon cloth were cut, and we spent some time polishing the molds with release wax, to make sure the epoxy didn't stick like cement to whatever we used for the mold itself.










We glued the male mold onto a piece of glass to ensure it was perfectly flat, and allowed a good surface for the excess carbon cloth to adhere to.











After 3 coats of wax on each mold, we then did a final coat of PVA release compound... as you can tell, we REALLY didn't want the carbon to be glued to the molds permanently!











Next step was to "wet out" each of the pieces of cloth with the epoxy resin, making sure it soaked the cloth, without being overly thick.  We were going to start with 3 layers of carbon.











Placing it on the molds.  We made sure that each layer was well adhered to the waxed surface of the mold, in order to follow the subtle, but important contours of the piece.

And now we wait... patience is required as once the 3 layers were put on each mold, it takes 8-12 hours for the piece to cure.... and then the REAL test.  Will it actually come off the mold???

In other news, our friends at Cycleboyz have come through again, tig-welding a stainless steel tab to our new megaphone muffler.  Will go about fabricating a bracket/strap in a future instalment.