How can I go about infusing a double sided thin flat sheet of carbon fiber? I want to make some business cards so I’d like both sides glossy. I tried pressing carbon fiber between glass and no matter how I did it, I’d get pin holes.
Could the best way to do it be to infuse two separate sheets and then epoxy them back to back?
Infuse two sheets and bond together would work but it’s not efficient or economical. To make a double gloss sheet, infuse between two pieces of glass or two polished tools. I use glass with a VERY low viscosity resin. You need to make sure you prevent race tracking around the sides due to the high resistance of the resin to flow between the sheets with no flow media.
John,
Roto is absolutely correct on this one, its a “tricky” type of infusion, but learning this technique will yield your desired results.
-Corban
Have you tried doing a layup on two pieces of glass and then pressing the two pieces of glass together with light pressure. The tighter you press the glass sheets together the more pinholes you will create. If you are still getting problems you can let each layup gel and then press them together. Have you done a layup on the glass with no pressure to see if it pinhole free? You’ll want to paint the glass with resin, lay on the dry carbon carbon fiber, and add resin so the fiber is fully saturated using light pressure from a brush.
I personally wouldn’t waste all the consumables when it could be done so much faster and cheaper without.
I’d like to be able to layup on glass with out infusion, but then I have zero consistency. If I were to bond two layers together I’d have uneven sheets. Thicker and thinner in different areas.
How could I go about infusing between two pieces of glass ? I can’t fit hoses or flow channels between them.
John,
My experience… the actual laminate is larger than your glass section. The two glass sheets are essentially the middle of the laminate, so your vacuum is drawing on one side, then your smooth glass sheets sandwiching the composites… and then the resin is being infused from the other side.
Let me know is this doesn’t make sense… I can try to make a rough sketch for you, no worries. Sometimes I don’t always portray in words what I’m trying to say.
Also, anyone else is more than welcome to jump in. I’ve only needed to so this a couple times, so if you have experience and a different way of doing it, by all means, in no way am I saying my path is the only one from point A to B.
-Corban
I saw a friend making flat sheets with wet layup with good results.
He used a glass table and wet out the carbon on it, then he used a flexible clear plastic piece(plexi glass or lexan from the looks of it) and “rolled” it onto the wet fabric. eg. he put the edge of the plastic on the fabric then by lightly flexing it, laying it down from left to right, till it is flat on the carbon.
He had no pinholes from what I could see, but I’m sure it would take some practice to get it perfect.
you can also try to put a light flow media between the 2 layers of carbon. I tried with anti hail net like flow media…it’s thinner and it can work. You can try glass-carbon-flow media-carbon-glass
Are you experiencing pinholes on both sides or just one side? What techniques have you tried?
Both sides. I tried pouring resin on a glass board, laying the carbon down, pouring more resin, then rolling on a thin sheet of plexi glass. What I’ll be doing is infusing a small panel, cutting it in half, and then pasting it together. Its just to make a quick prototype piece for a client. After that, I’ll try infusing a few layers between glass and a thin flow media in between. I’ll post my results :).