Wild thoughts about carbon fibre build

[Opto-Mystic]

I have had a vision in the back of my mind of looking at the feasibility of designing and building my own  carbon fibre 550ish hex.

Thank to many of you who have helped me through my learning pains, some very expensive pains too, I have learned much about the way our crafts work - I still have a lot to learn but I do owe you a huge vote of thanks   

I know nothing about fabricating with carbon fibre other than cutting a short cf rod to replace my broken gps mount!

Letting Google be my friend as well as this forum, I decided to learn about health & safety issues , if any re CF fabrication at home. I immediately found this video which seems to answer many of the new comers to intending to play with this  material:

http://www.easycomposites.co.uk/Composites-Tutorials/How-to-Cut-and-Shape-Carbon-Fibre.aspx

[cosmorogers]

I designed my own carbon fibre mounting plate for my landing legs for my hex, emailed the DXF file to a company (I forget who, but can did them out), sent some money as well and a couple of days later a precision cut cf plate arrived 
Much easier than doing it myself (although I designed it myself), and with much more accurate results than you could ever achieve by hand 

Just something else to think about

[DarkButterfly]

I';ve worked with CF,
Best to cut it ouside as the dust gets into everything, also it ruins bandsaw blades.

Great material but horrible to fabricate with.

[guest325]

I';ve worked with CF,
Best to cut it ouside as the dust gets into everything, also it ruins bandsaw blades.
Great material but horrible to fabricate with.

And make sure that any wind blowing is from behind you!  When I';ve cut it I';ve used diamond impregnated discs, expensive but work really well!

[DebianDave]

I hear cutting it wet is better for the dust and kinder to the blades

[Andy75]

Use one of those knobbly hardened blades they sell for cutting ceramic tiles from B&Q - works a treat.

[NorcoT]

It';s easier to cut when fabric form, scissors work (although they will blunt) so advice is do majority of the cutting before you do the layup / resin. That is of course assuming you';re going down the route of a manual layup?

It';s very similar (if not identical) to glass fibre layup fabrication. You can design a shape, make a mould, layup the shape in the mould ply by ply while applying resin to wet the sheets, let it set and Voila you have a carbon fibre component. Probably final cutting / sanding required so the closer you can layup to final shape the less work.

If you';re just fabricating from flat plate shapes then it may be easiest to have a company just laser cut it for you out of preproduction sheets.