Originally Posted by Young Performance

I lay it up on an old window that's about 4'x6'. Laying it up face down on glass seems to work the best. The glass is perfectly flat and you can look underneath and see any air bubbles. We wax the hell out of the window first with mold wax. Any good wax will work. We then start with the carbon. I use a 2x2 twill pattern, since it looks like your "typical" carbon fiber that everyone thinks of. We wet it out with epoxy resin (West Systems) and roll out the air. We then lay the second layer of carbon right over the first, once it's rolled out. Then comes the fiberglass.
It depends on what I'm using the carbon for as to which fiberglass I use. If I want to make it thicker, I use a 12oz. 45* biaxial. The last sheet we layed up consisted of 2 layers of carbon and 5 layers of 12oz biaxial, all layed in succession. We do all of the layers in one shot. It takes a while to lay up and roll that many layers in a sheet that large, but it's worth it in the end. The last one ended up being about 3/16" thick. I used it in a single layer for a multitude of things, but we also doubled it up. We used it to make our electronics plates that go on the back of the engines. We doubled it so that not only would it be 3/8" thick, but it would have carbon on both sides, since both sides are visible. It that case, we sanded the back sides of both pieces, layed one layer of 1 1/2oz cloth with epoxy resin and put it on the hydraulic press with about 2000 psi on it. It was sandwiched between 1" pieces of aluminum to distribute the load. After sitting overnight, it was like a piece of steel. We were actually able to drill and tap it to mount the electronics.

Here are a few pics from a sheet we layed up a while back. I hope that all made sense. If not, let me know and I'll try to explain it better.
Eddie

Originally Posted by Young Performance

I lay it up on an old window that's about 4'x6'. Laying it up face down on glass seems to work the best. The glass is perfectly flat and you can look underneath and see any air bubbles. We wax the hell out of the window first with mold wax. Any good wax will work. We then start with the carbon. I use a 2x2 twill pattern, since it looks like your "typical" carbon fiber that everyone thinks of. We wet it out with epoxy resin (West Systems) and roll out the air. We then lay the second layer of carbon right over the first, once it's rolled out. Then comes the fiberglass.
It depends on what I'm using the carbon for as to which fiberglass I use. If I want to make it thicker, I use a 12oz. 45* biaxial. The last sheet we layed up consisted of 2 layers of carbon and 5 layers of 12oz biaxial, all layed in succession. We do all of the layers in one shot. It takes a while to lay up and roll that many layers in a sheet that large, but it's worth it in the end. The last one ended up being about 3/16" thick. I used it in a single layer for a multitude of things, but we also doubled it up. We used it to make our electronics plates that go on the back of the engines. We doubled it so that not only would it be 3/8" thick, but it would have carbon on both sides, since both sides are visible. It that case, we sanded the back sides of both pieces, layed one layer of 1 1/2oz cloth with epoxy resin and put it on the hydraulic press with about 2000 psi on it. It was sandwiched between 1" pieces of aluminum to distribute the load. After sitting overnight, it was like a piece of steel. We were actually able to drill and tap it to mount the electronics.

Here are a few pics from a sheet we layed up a while back. I hope that all made sense. If not, let me know and I'll try to explain it better.
Eddie

Originally Posted by O.C.Barry

Eddie - Great info, thanks for sharing, it gave me lots of good ideas.

Originally Posted by dammmagnum

Eddie,


Glad I could help. It's pretty easy to do. Just take your time and make sure you have everything you need before you start. I get everything from US Composites.

Thank you
You are doing the full lay up of carbon fiber and fiberglass and not trying to bond/laminate the fiberglass to a carbon fiber sheet. Have you ever tried vacuum bagging the lay up?
We lamainate Fr4 Fiberglass pre-pregs to Fr4 fiberglass cores in vacuum presses at about 300-350 PSI up tot baout 350F.

Thank you
Jim

Originally Posted by Young Performance

I've never tried vacuum bagging. We aren't using it for anything structural, so I never really felt the need to do it. Not to mention, I don't have a vacuum set up


Here are a few pics with the carbon on the engines. We typically use it for coil mounts or electronic plates.
Eddie

Originally Posted by chrisf695

I'm trying to decide on what thickness i will need for my gauge panel... 2mm, 3mm? The price jumps quite a bit just going 2-3 on eBay...

Any suggestions would be great. Pic below of panel.


http://s1057.beta.photobucket.com/us...G0192.jpg.html