I’m new to both the forum and to making carbon fiber stuff. My interest is as follows:
I have an old piano I’ve mostly rebuilt, and the action (little moving parts between the keys and the hammers) is wood. Some modern pianos have these made out of carbon fiber materials, which are quite advantageous in this application. Such parts look like this:
However, they are not popular enough to be offered as generic replacements for non-grand pianos like mine, so I thought I might try making my own, using the wooden parts native to my piano as mold patterns.
My problem:
I’ve read/watched material on this process, but everything I find seems to be about making a “planar”/2D-ish type of object, or hollow objects. I’m a little tepid on the process to follow for making small solid objects like the one above…like a small split mold, maybe?..or how to layer the fabric/resin in there.
Also, Kawai, one of the companies that makes their pianos with these, boast of an “ABS-carbon” material. All I could think of was mixing ABS powder (haven’t found where to buy conveniently :-P) in with the resin & fabric, but I’d be content without adding that if the part were simply rigid and light.
Anyone tried/know how to go about something like this?