cutting carbon fiber!

blanex1

blanex1

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Feb 11, 2015
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i have some carbon fiber twill in 1/4'' but would like to get 3/16 slabs to use for scales,what would be the best way to cut it!i have a large table saw with fine cut blade running on 220v vary high speed,would this work! i no the warnings about using a mask and long sleeve top/gloves ect.but i have never cut this stuff before,only shaped it,a little help hear,thank you guys.
 
A band saw won't work, the teeth will just peel the layer's apart.

Use baby powder, to clog your pores. Better then long sleeves.
Lightly coat your arms, joints, and neck..

I use a Dremel, with a cut off wheel, to cut ask my CF. But a handful of my friends have rotors, that they use.

I'm also into RC rock crawling..
 
I don't know about CF for knife scales but I have just used a hack saw many times and it is easy to cut that way. Experiment with the number of teeth per inch (32, 24, 18, 14). You want three teething in the cut as a rule of thumb but two works.

Main thing is don't breath this stuff. Wear a GOOD respirator as apposed to a cheep dust mask. Do you have a beard? respirators leak around facial hair. You might want to cut it out side so you don't breath it latter when you go back to the shop to work. Some dust collection systems or vacuums are just going to blow it all around your work space to breath so I don't think I would want to cut it with a table saw hooked to a dust collector.

I also spray it with water with a plant mister (old Windex bottle) while cutting just to keep the junk from floating around in the air.
 
Dremel all the way - seriously do wear a respirator unless you want to be coughing blood like a death metal singer.
Make sure to protect the vents of the dremel by isolating your work if possible, or using water or oil to cut with.
Wear good gloves, you can get cut bad. Or hell, get a whole damn safety suit if you intend to work with it often enough. Disposable or reusable.
Just be careful. It's easy enough, just better not to learn the ins and outs the hard way with this.
Watch some videos for sure. Some of the things carbon fiber is suspended in can also cause problems, like fumes from plastics and resins.

I'm no expert or anything, only worked with it a few times, you should really read up on it and watch some videos. I did so but it has almost been a couple years and so I cannot offer up much more advice than I can remember.
If Easy Composites Corp has their videos still up, watch them for sure.

They can show you how to make that twill into slabs I think, I only ever worked with sheets of fiber, no raw twill.

EDIT

Here is the video I used in the past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWzN6GZeEzs

That same channel has some videos on making sheets.
Best bet, way better than text. Especially from some random guy like me who only has a few times worth of experience in cutting carbon fiber at all.
Although there are tons of very experienced people on this forum with this, video really trumps text I feel. But that is just me and my own learning experiences :P
 
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