Seeking mould making advice

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#1

Hi everyone,

Please could somebody give me a bit of advice on mould making?

As you may have read in one of my previous posts im going to make a set of carbon fibre motorcycle fairings.

I read in a mould making guide somewhere that when making a mould form a current part, the finish of the part is the finish you get in your mould, and therefore the finish you get on your carbon fibre part.

I have damaged fairings that have been repaired and sanded down, in order to get a really good finish on my carbon parts, would i get away with simply spraying a few layers of primer so that the surface is completely smooth, or should i get them professionally painted so the surface is glossy?

Thanks

#2

Paint them your self and burnish them. All my plugs finished in 600 this is because they get clear coated. Dont waste time polishing you part to a mirror finishif you plan on a clear coat its a waste of man hours

#3

Hi mate, i wasn’t planning on giving them a clear coat, iv seen some tutorials of the part having a perfect finish straight out of the mould.
Good idea about the painting, iv never sprayed anything before, but i suppose it hasn’t got to look good as long as the actual finish is good.

#4

With carbon, you’ll probably want to clear coat the part. Unless you use a vinyl ester or polyester resin. Then you can use a clear gel coat in which case you need a high gloss finish on your plug.

#5

A 2k primer should be enough but you will need to flat it back to a reasonably fine grade paper of you wont have a good surface finish in your mould. I would say p800 should be fine enough for your plug. Ypu might then want to flat and polish the mould up after also. The finner grade paper you use the better the surface finish will be.

Dont forget that if you do any sanding back then you will also need to polish back up after to get any sort of sheen. You.ll need to use somesort of cutting compound to get the shine back.

#6

Check out the mold making tag! Lots of threads have covered all issues with mold and plug making.

http://www.compositescentral.com/tags.php?tag=mold