Hi there,
I think I'm the guy who quink is referring too. :flamed:
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Thanks for the idea and suggestions. We two (actually 4) are thinking to start something and.. not sure exactly what so you guys have made a great contribution
As for carbon items, any one who knows FRP (fibre reinforced plastics) would agree with me that carbon is both over-rated and under-rated. Over-rated because you can't really use carbon fibre in everything and at times it's not the best engineering material for a particular product/item, an example would be carbon fibre strut brace or carbon fibre helmets. On the other hand it's under-rated.. because many ppl simply favors carbon fibre because of it's (stereotype) beautiful texture and not it's properties. It's also under-rated because of the "quality" of carbon fibre parts available on the market. By quality I mean strength vs weight and not how glossy or how shiny it is. Anything can be shiny if one is willing to spend time and buff it up...
To give some insights of how conventional FRP are manufactured: At the lowest end of the scale is probably the cheap locally manufactured glass bodykits. Most of those kits are made with open mold method. ie you have a female mold of the bumper, chopped strand glass fibres are laid into the mold and infused with polyester resin. And whoa la there is your bumper (after trimming and fixing up manufacture imperfections, ie voids and pin holes.)
while the high end body kit (ie those made at japan genuine C-west and big brand ones) are made with glass cloth (instead of chopped fibrestrand) and better resin (maybe vinylester). And the difference between high end bodykit and low end is the weight and flexibility... (Chopstrand has larger space in-between fibres, so it absorbs more resin.. and because it's poorly manufactures a lot of putty and body filler are needed to finish the bumper off)
now moving to carbon fibre... it can be made using open mold method too, but manufactures can't use body filler anymore cos most ppl wanted to see the carbon weave. So to minimise fark ups, manufactures use a shit load of resin to make sure fibres are well soaked and there are no air bubbles. This equals no weight/strength difference to a fibre glassed item other than the big price tag.
Quink and my self used to be involved in this motorsport thing and I was the main dude responsible for all wet composite work although I'm pretty familiar with prepreg too. (I would write a better thesis on it than the thesis I did on electronic assisted gear shifting)
One of our initial motive to start producing some carbon fibre items is because we wanted do something we all loved, carbon fibre and motorvehicles and to improve the perception of carbon fibre as an engineering material and to make better products available to the general public.
Of course this is highly restricted by the price.. i would like to use prepreg my self.. it's a hell lot easier to work with.. but very little of us would be able to afford it. (prepreg isn't sold per meter, it's sold by per roll, about 30 meters with a shelf life of a few weeks (depending on the resin matrix used). And the tooling set up cost to manufacture prepreg is enormous.... i don't think we could use 30meters of carbon in a few weeks time.... but who knows, maybe there is enough interest for me and quink to invest in this..
Anyway, a boot lid have been mentioned quite many times, there are many options to go about it,
if it's all show no go, carbon skin and retain the rest of the metal frame. a couple of hundard dollars and done.
Or we can go all the way and make the entire thing out of carbon or glass (glass isn't such a bad material, it's actually "stronger" than carbon fibre in some ways. For example, cabonfibre is extremely brittle and stiff. where glass allows flex and stretchs before it gives up). There are many ways we could manufacture this.. and we are planning to do a few prototypes to finalise the technic.. but as an estimate, a race trim boot lid should weigh around 5kg and no more than 8kg max for a super tough road road version.
At this point of time, it's too early to say how much a boot lid or any other item would cost, since we haven't made anything yet.. but as a superdooper rough estimate, a full carbon boot lid ready for clear coat or painting would cost around $600~$1000 depending on what kind of material* "you" would like to use and what feature you would like to have.. ie dvd player or screen molded in hahahaha... just joking (but it isn't impossible.)
Personally, I am more interested in manufacturing body panels and largish parts that was made in metal by car manufacturer.. where it makes more sense to spend money on shaving off half the weight of an oem item. As an example half the weight of a bonnet or boot (12kg) is more important than half the weight a instrument (500g) surround... if you get wat i mean. But it's your money it's your call. Hell I'll even make you a carbon gear box if you pay me enough. or a cam cover.... or a monoque chassis
humm.. what else.. Quink and me are looking at possibilities at the moment.. not even prototyping yet.. sorry to make you guys all excited.... :Oops:
Neverless, thank you very much for the generous comments and reply =)
*material, since every item can be made to order, you can specify what grade of material you would like to use, ie polyester resin (shitty.. ) vinylester (fuel safe and a a bit better mechanical strength compared to polyester) or epoxy (the best resin available to general public.. before we start to go into aviation/military grade resin.. which isn't really available without special order/import anyway).
And you could choose carbon weave pattern, colored fibres, kevlar. Different sandwich material will be available too... End less options.. arrh.. it making me having a woody.....
