After years of dreaming and ideating around making carbon fiber products of some sort, I finally had a need to build some custom parts for my triathlon bike. After spending a considerable amount of time reading, watching and listening to tutorials online, I took the plunge and purchased some starter materials. My initial plan was to work with 3D printed moulds and do wet layup.
I purchased a 3D printed started kit from Easy Composites. The shipping was a little expensive (they are based in the UK) but seemed to have the best products, prices and matching material requirements for my needs.
My first project was a simple chain ring cover (which would be the next version of the 3D printed aero cover I 3D printed here). The purpose of this cover is to streamline airflow over the crank while in motion to reduce the bikes Cda (Coefficient of Drag). aka. More slip streamed.
Step 1: Design a mould in Fusion 360 based on the part design.
Step 2: 3D print the mould (11 hour print!)
Step 3: Finishing the mould with resin, flatting and sanding is considerably more work than I had anticipated. Ultimately the mould is going to be a representation of the finished part, so the more work you put into it, the better the finished part will be 🙂 The image above is an example of pulling a part directly from an unfinished 3D print, where you can see the layer lines.
Step 4: Doing the actual carbon fiber layup which is pretty much the easiest part of the project. Once this was done, I put the part along with a peel ply and breather cloth into a vacuum bag to cure for around 8 hours.
Step 5: Pulling out of the mould, and finishing the edges with a Dremel.
Overall, not bad for a first pass … I have some ideas and variations for this project, but for now will probably not quite call it a success 🙂
You must be logged in to post a comment.