Hey this is for anyone who has experience in fibre glassing and carbon fibre glassing. Guy at my local fibreglass supply shop said i can just use polyester resin for the carbon mesh as i would for regular fibreglassing, although alot of people are saying i should use epoxy resin?
im no pro, but from what i've been told you should be using an epoxy resin. could of told u more if i was listening when i was at extreme motorsport this came up in discussion, but i was too busy checking out the other cars that were there.
Friday, August 05, 2005 - 07:28 pm, by: peter lang
Sweeet! what u makin buddy? I was a laminator for 4-5 years, and it really depends on the application for the finished product as to which resin to use. For example polyester resin is cheap/easy but is the most brittle ,not very uv stable, (seen how surf boards turn brown in the sun). Next is vinyl ester only a little dearer ,much tougher stronger and good uv stablity for clear finishes ,also temperature stable to at least 250c. epoxy resin is a bit dearer again ,messy sticky shit to work with, needs special solvent to clean up.but has a very clear finish .very strong and tough,durable only to about 80c Then you can get fancy stuff called phenolic resin to make heat shields and other high temp stuff that can survive about 1100 c
Having said all that its important to get it right first time when laminating carbon fibre cloth cause it aint cheap .
Monday, August 08, 2005 - 07:13 pm, by: Tim Appleton
You need a "surfboard" epoxy resin if you want good UV stability otherwise it tends to go yellow if it cops lots of sun.
Carbon fibre is pretty tricky to layup because you can't see when there are bubbles on the other side of it. You have to lay it up pretty wet and then work the bubbles and excess resin out before it sets.
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