I braved the big lay-up today. Holy crap it was REALLY hard. If I was smart and patient I would have worked my way up slowly in terms of project size and difficultly. I made a couple mistakes (didn't know they were mistakes until I was well past the point of no return.

- First mistake was at the concept level. My Aluminum frame needs to poke through the carbon skin. So I needed to cut holes in the carbon fabric before the layup. This is a really bad idea. With the holes cut it just turns into an unraveling mess around them.

- Next mistake was wetting out the first layer of fabric on my solid sheet. I got it nice and tacky.... and then it was pretty much impossible to handle and then try and drape over the wing. It stuck in the wrong places and turned into a wrinkly nightmare. Lots of cursing. I had seen a lot of guys in videos wet out material like that and in that process. But it doesn't work on such large complex parts. I should have laid it over the wing dry and wet it out in place - which is what I did on the 2nd layer.

- Had to mix a 2nd batch of resin because I took forever. Luckily the cold temps help keep the work life really long.

- Getting out all the wrinkles and working the material over the leading edge of the wing was really difficult.

- Let it sit in the vacuum bag most of the afternoon/evening.

- Peel ply was pretty hard to pull off. Grunting involved. I found some scattered dry areas, I'll go back and add some resin to them next week.

It's nowhere near perfect, but it looks like it came out usable for sure. When I was struggling with the first layer drapping over the wing I was pretty sure I had just wasted a couple hundred bucks and was going to make carbon fiber tumble weeds. So I'm glad I was able to salvage it. I learned a lot. I had notions of wanting to do some parts like doors etc. But clearly that's past my experience level at this point. There are so many steps involved in working with this stuff - it's no picnic.

My work area, getting ready to start.



Mistake. Trying to wet out the material and then drape it. Shoulod have drapped it dry and then wet it in-place.



Hours and many curse words later.







Peeling away the peel ply and breather fabric. Hello Moto.



Now I need to trim off the excess and wet out a couple dry spots.

 

I know you know what you doing BUT you could have added another line to suck the resin to ensure wetting all over

here's an example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iylkt...rom=PL&index=8

Nice simple setup... I run two pumps with a resin trap ...

NICE!

 

I almost know what I'm doing. Infusion is pretty cool. This actually wet out pretty well. There are just a few tiny areas to touch -up.

 

Very interesting, when are we going to get a pressurized oven to make the really strong pieces?! laugh.. Great project. Better than going to school reading about your work on this thread! I'm inspired to continue working on my Evo this winter. Thanks, Dave One great thing about bagging is the reduction of fumes in your work environment. When we worked with our fiberglass project while wearing respirators the exposure to the resin was still brutal.

 

looks exactly like my first attempt at home made carbon wings. your end product looks better then mine, but i think we both made the same mistake. not nearly enough prep time. realistically anything that is going to be seen needs a mold on the visible side to ensure the smoothest finish. our formula car wings have a female mold that we call tacos. it looks exactly like a taco shell the inside on the taco has a super smooth finish of gel coat which gives the final carbon a excellent finish. there is no interior foam of out wings. once the carbon is removed from the taco molds (and picture the new wing also being a taco, on the trailing edge it is not connected), we use a super strong epoxie to glue the aluminum endcaps and upright supports in place. cutting the through holes for the upright supports is far easier once it is hard carbon... doing it as fabric is a PITA. once we are glueing the aluminum pieces in, then we glue the trailing edge together finish the wing.

 

^^^ Do you have any pictures of the molds and tacos?

 

Did a little work out in the 32 degree garage. Trimmed the excess material off the ends using the little air saw, it was really easy. Then used a sanding wheel on the grinder to smooth the ends of the wing after cutting. I clamped some angle to the trailing edge to make a guide for cutting - again the air saw was money.



After cutting.



I put a coat of satin black paint on the wing and drilled and tapped the ends for endplate mounting. I just need to paint the endplates and I'm done. Overall it looks OK, not perfect. But I'm positive it is going to make the downforce and it was a great way to learn about composite fabricating. So the overall project has been pretty good.

 

Amazing. I love the stuff you do yourself, you are my engineering idol. Keep posting this great reading

 

Good job jid!

I'm an engineer, too, and need to start doing more fun projects like this.

 

Maybe it's the somewhat small/low res picture, but I think it looks pretty damn good!

well done sir....

 

Wing is finished. Just need to put some cool guy stickers on the endplates and maybe a big one on the top surface.

I cut an access hole inside the trunk support to add another mounting point for the base plates.

 

Great project. Now its time to cover the car with yarn tufts, take it out on the freeway and have a couple of friends take a video it from another car. Try to get some shots of the front, side and back of the car doing 80mph.

 

That's the plan, I also have a way to measure downforce on the chassis. Just need to change a headgasket and maybe build a cage first....

 

Looks good jid2. What is the approximate thickness of the graphite skins?

 

Jared, yer pro man, that's freaking awesome!