cutting carbon fiber panels?
 

i was going to have another dash panel made for my boat. I decied carbon fiber would look very neat.

but when i called the laser cutter shop they informed me that carbon fiber cannot be cut on a laser cutter.

how else can the panel be cut??? Hole saws arent; really an option becasue there are at 15 holes that need to be cut AN there are couple of square holes for switches.

Any ideas?

Find someone with a CNC machine. I think you have to cut it with tradtional tools. Maybe a water jet???

hmmm i didn't even think about a cnc. damn good idea. hell i have the cad from the first dash panel that was done on the laser cutter.

abrasive waterjet, if there's one local. They can prolly do it while you wait. Call a local "tool & die" shop and ask them who has one.

is it eth same idea as a laser cuter? DO you feed cad into it and it cuts out eth part for you?

It's exactly like a laser. The machine drives a water stream around instead of a laser beam.

An abrasive jet will cut up to 4" thick steel or down to a sheet of cardboard - it doesn't care...

They use waterjets in pure water or abrasive jet. Pure water is used for lots of things, but mainly food products and stuff they don't want to wash grit off of. Pure water is limited in what it can cut though.

Abrasive jet uses a water stream, but it picks up garnet particles to blast thru the stream with the water like sandpaper. This is the stuff that is mean as hell.

If you have true carbon fiber, I'd make sure I went to a guy with an abrasive waterjet and not a pure water one.

The pure water ones are safer. If you run your hand thru one of those, it just cuts it off and fills your arm veins up with water which they can milk out and save your arm.

If you run your hand under an abrasive jet, it cuts off your hand, fills half of the veins in your arm up with sand, and you end up with an amputated arm.

Laser will usually just cause a nasty burn since the beam focus is at the workpiece and not your hand..

Cool, eh?