A word of caution

General Composites Discussions Products Talk
#1

If you ever planned on using colored fiberglass-carbon hybrid… I wouldn’t suggest making an actuall part until you have done some testing with the material.

I talked with a vendor and from experience I can say that the colored fiberglass hybrid we had on hand in various colors sucked. Polyester and vinylester resin will not bond to it so the laminate just peels apart after the resin is cured. Epoxy resin would probably work better, but it’s best to run a test part so you can pick, peel, and generally abuse the part to see how it holds up; before trying to make the final part.

#2

I would never use polyester with carbon (or any hybrid version of it) never mind its colour, anyway…

#3

Why? It works fine.
I wouldn’t use it for my business due to our requirements, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with a properly made polyester/carbon fiber part. Not good for structural items, but it still works for many applications.

#4

it works, but its a pity…i feel like wasting the carbon on polyester…

#5

My thoughts exactly.

#6

Fastrr, try experimenting with maybe:

clear PER gel coat

Red pigment PER clear lam resin

Fiberglass (or silver Kevlar?)

And you know the rest…

#7

I may order some red dye for the epoxy i’m using… make a sample red hybrid-carbon cloth part with the red tinted epoxy.

Nice idea Werksberg :cool:

polyester is fine for cosmetic c/f parts. The resin cures fast and is easy to work with. I mainly use epoxy because of fumes/odor of polyester and vinylester resins.

#8

We’ve done some useful coloring accent pieces using hybrid cloth. One particularly successfuly one was a hood for a MicroSprint racer. We stylized it to have an angry face, yellow in the “eyes”, red accents over the “eyes”, and blue/black combos all over for the “face.”

It’s just a matter of exploring the possibilities, and not getting frustrated by the failures…

-G-