anyone know what happened to composites fab??

General Composites Discussions Showcase
#1

this is kinda a nosey question. anyways im originally from colorado and will now be opening a manufacturing shop on the east coast. im curious why composites fab is no longer and what if any issues the owner ran into… seems like he had a good thing going.

any pointers to a fellow coloradian??? (is that a word)

lol

btw im originally from highlands ranch where i graduated in 2002. i actually heard of a kid that was making parts for a couple peeps i hung out with. its a shot in the dark but is this the same person??? or people???

#2

I THINK that he was making low quality parts and customers were getting ripped off and pisses… I think that’s what I read on some youtube videos… but don’t quote me!

#3

Are we speaking of DualTwill… aka CarbonAll? He was making mouse pads last time i saw him on YouTube lol.

I guess you have to know me but i make fun of friends all the time… he’s was raking in the big bucks making mouse pads :smiley:

#4

his quality of work doesnt look too damn bad actually. i came across his site which was shut down and got a little curious. it seems he scammed a bunch of people on honda techa through group buys and got himself in some shit.

from what i saw he did some work for a few race cars and teams which is pretty impressive. as well as having ebay on lockdown. im going to be doing strictly infusion and hoping to copy his endevours but try to do a different buisness model approach.

before i go passing judgement on someone i have never met or delt with i just wanna say it seemed like he was at one point doing great and raking in a bunch of money.

what i gathered is he was accepting orders for parts he hadnt made yet, got behind, and was never able to get out of the hole. i at one point did this and stopped as soon as i realized i needed to bite the bullet and take care of my customers.

im opening a shop here shortly and would like some pointers from people that are actually setting themselves above the average small run production shop scene. how have you made it big and stayed big.

i want to take this hobby to the next level.

#5

Don’t take my comment as gospel… I was merely repeating what I had read. Worth no more no less…:cool:

#6

DT, who owned composites fab, sold it to an overseas company. I believe he kept a few of his more productive molds for himself. That was my understanding of it anyway.

#7

The quality of everything that he made was Grade A. The only problems I had ever had, was at the fault of the shipper, either the employee’s stealing product in the middle of its way to delivery (sad but true, and tracking#'s prove it so) , or the shipper mishandling product as you can tell the box was disturbed versus the product broken, box in perfect shape. Everything he made was great quality as well as hard to find. There were not too many companies that could offer direct customer to seller communication like he could. I am not really sure of what truly happened, as there was never a public statement made by Dustin, but I have heard all the rumors, and don’t really know what to believe as there is no hard proof, directly from him.

#8

i believe i read on hondatech a while ago that he had filled a big order for an overseas company (in the tens of thousands of dollars) and something happend where they ripped him off(bounce a check/fake check/whatever and hten he halfway closed/had some trouble shipping parts out to hondatechers while filing bankrupcy

im not connected to anybody but i believe thats the jist of what i read

#9

heres a link to someone that is using the same picture. the only reason i remember the parts is because the hosting site was car domain. i don’t know if it is the individual that your looking for but maybe it’ll help you.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/92-95-HONDA-CIVIC-CARBON-FIBER-DOOR-INSERTS-HOOD-KIT_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ33696QQihZ011QQitemZ320239205508QQrdZ1QQsspagenameZWDVW

#10

Apparently he sold a bunch of bad parts and disappeared. Look up his videos on youtube.

#11

gotta be the same guy, same parts line same pics same marketing techniques also. Theres something you can’t really change unless you know what you’re doing

#12

Info from 5/18/2007:

[i]This is the reason the shop was sold.

I got screwed by one of my wholesale accounts. I made some molds for a company in england and shipped them to them. well 5 months later they did a chargeback stating they never got anything even though I had tracking to show he even signed for it. Well my bank never notified me of the chargeback so they gave him his $12,000 and he has my molds. I have to sue my merchant services and if im lucky I will get it back in like a year!!! This all started saturday when I found my account negative 5 digits. So I had to take a HUGE loan out just to get back out of the negative. So I put the shop up for sale thinking it would take forever to sell but I sold it in 2 days. Before the sale is finalized I have to refund all my customers that their stuff has not been shipped because I don’t want any payments out there in my name just in case he does not fulfil his orders. This is why I have to send money orders. I have closed my merchant services account so I can not refund via that way or that is the way I would have did it because that would be the easiest route to go. I am very sorry I have to refund if that is the case but you guys will all get your money back. If I would have not sold it so quick everyone would get their roof cap. I put it for sale on tuesday and it sold yesterday.
[/i]

#13

that really sux ! i hope you get the bastard!!! every dog has its day…

#14

Always get paid up front. If not all at once, ship them a partial order for what they paid up front for. Otherwise it is too big of a risk. I’m not giving carbonall - dual twill advice because he learned the hard way apparently.

Always get paid up front :wink:

#15

here is what offically happened. I am drycarbonparts that is selling on ebay. Dustin the original owner of composites fab is working a composites job in nevada now. He had grade a products that is not a doubt or he would not get away with selling hoods for a grand for civics when his biggest competitor was selling them for $400. Dustin sold some stuff for evos which are on this forum from way back as well to a wholesale account in the UK. This account bought like $30,000 worth of stuff overtime. They recieved everything with no show of issues. Well Dustin decided that the parts wer no longer cost effective for him to make with the rise of everything so he optioned off to the shop to purchase all the mold for about $12,000. They said ok and he shipped some molds to that company. 5 months later the company was going bankrupt so they thought they could do chargebacks on just about everything they purchased over the last 6 months. The bank dustin had, had the wrong address on the chargeback and he never got it. So one day he was negative a large amount in his account. So he sold the business to a guy named mike. Dustin took a huge loan out to pay back customers. His loan fell a little short I guess so like 4 or 5 people did not get refunded out of over 200. When he sold the company he had a contract with mike that milke would contact the customers that have not got refunded and he would refund and that was part of the deal. Mike was a young kid with no business background. Dustin did not care who he sold it too he just wanted to be out from under it. Mike ran it to the ground selling on ebay. He got so many negatives and sending out parts where he was having a company in canada make that was faulty. Could not meet the demand and ebay shut him down. He ended up taking out bankruptcy and put the company up for sale. I knew dustin a little and I had extensive infusion experience and I was looking at going out on my own. I saw the company forsale on craigslist believe it or not lol. In December me and my wife purchased the molds he had, the materials, and any blemishes or already made parts. The reason why I am so informed is because I had to be. I have already had to deal with one of the customers that has not been refunded and I needed to know the whole ordeal.

As you can see from my auctions my customers are very pleased with their stuff and getting their stuff very swiftly! I am in no way affiliated with dustin and mostly not with mike. My company does make a lot of what they did because we did purchase the molds but we make a lot more that we designed ourselves. So now you have the official reason of what happened. I guess dustin is doing well now. He ended up not having to take up bankruptcy and the company he got screwed from the owner is in jail now and they are working with the government to get his money back. It was a sad ordeal I bet cause he did have a good thing going but if it did not happen I would not have been living out my dream of owning a fully functional composites fabrication facility :slight_smile:

#16

So you are using prepregs? Cured in oven or autoclave? That would be rare for an ebay seller, so hopefully that name is not misleading.

#17

Where I learned everything, anything that was closed molded and put into the molds dry was considered dry molding hence the name. Everything we do is infused with either ver or epoxy resin. We do put everything in a 140 degree room under vacuum for at least 5 hours. We have capabilies to use and autoclave if we wanted, but it is renting it from another company that uses it for something completly different. We do use prepregs as well but we oven cure them and have plenty of success with it.

#18

Unless it’s prepreg, it is not dry carbon.

#19

I have read several books written in the UK and their definition of dry carbon is anything that is not put in the molds wet before vacuum is dry and also talking with the main US production rep for hexel he was refering infusion parts as dry carbon parts as well. That was at SEMA last november. Im from London originally so I just go from what I have been taught and from what everyone else in my market have told me. I worked for a composites shop that was owned by the city Londan. I dont know if it is a europeans that classify it that way and not here. I know for a fact infused stuff in china (or i guess just the factory I toured) is called dry carbon as well. I did a factory tour a year and a half ago and when I went into the infusion section of the building they called it the dry carbon layup room. They made infused bus components out of glass and called them dry fiberglass parts as well, so like I said I am just going from what i know.in we do sell prepreg parts and have sold them on ebay as well but most of our normal produciton stuff is infused. Most of our pre-preg stuff goes to the UK and Spain. Until I moved here I have never heard of pre-preg parts called dry. Everyone just called pre-preg parts preg parts. Also I forgot to add that drycarbonparts is not the name of our company. It is just the name we used on ebay. On the auction and on our site that is to be up next week it is very very clear how everything is made with infusion unless noted differently. Maybe it is different in the automotive section. I have only been making automotive parts for about 7 months now. i dont know like I said I guess it is different here then it is where I was from, But the customer does know what they are getting unless they dont read the auction.

So what is the classifications here in the US?

infused parts are just called infused parts?
dry carbon is pre-preg only?

what do they call open molded parts? we just called them open molded parts. I have only been on this site for a couple days and I found it one time about a year ago but could not find it again till the other day.

#20

I confirm that, in Europe infusion=dry carbon and pre pregs it`s pre pregs