Greetings,
My name is Nick and I race snowmobiles. In the last 2 or 3 years composites and carbon fiber has been showing up more and more in Ice Oval Snowmobile Racing.
TJ Patrick www.patrickcustomcarbon.com kind of started the madness with a clutch cover and now it is exploding.
So I figured I should jump into the mix as well. I have been doing a fair amount of reading, but need more. I appreciate many of the helpful posts on this site. I may take a course from David Algie ACA LP-1 Airplane (formerly the Woodward Project) but being I just missed a course in July I will probably just get a book from him.
I bough a couple of little starter kits from illstreet.com and it is obvious they are just starter kits for playing around.
I want to get into building more important structural pieces and of course better quality.
PrePreg is where I wan to end up or head towards. I have been reading more about the OOA processes, but need some advice there. I am not sure I want to make a huge investment in an Autoclave, but can probably handle some type of oven for in my shop. I have seen a number of good posts here too.
One thing that I am struggling with in a big way is finding quality suppliers in the US.
I must give credit to easy composites for their YouTube videos and easy kits, but I didn’t purchase them because of the extreme cost to ship to the US.
I know that we have these products here I just don’t know enough about resins, materials, and processes yet to order and it can be an expensive mistake! $100 cans of resin at a time!
I am really looking forward to doing some DIY PrePreg like what Algie did in that video everyone has probably seen, but also interested in finding some other ways to do things.
Suppliers and educated purchases are my main obstacles right now.
Thank you all for your informational posts and help! I appreciate it!