Could the good people on the forum educate me on carbon fiber. I suspect not all carbon fiber bike products are created equally, or so I hear on here.

What’s the difference in materials and construction techniques used for different rims and different frames for example?

I hear a lot of words like lay up, modulus, 3k weave, bladder etc… what are they talking about?

How is a top carbon product made? Could I make something at home?

Obviously there is lots of info on the web about this but this forum has an amazing ability to give good explanations, or absolute dribble.

So please tell me what you know…

(I feel the need to add I’m not completely clueless about this topic but I would like to have confidence in what I think I know. So please share even the most basic of information. Thanks)

What are you thinking of building? Thatll help those in the know to direct teir advice and knowledge

I’m not thinking of building anything. Well not at the moment anyway. I’m just interested to know about this wonderful black material.

How is a top carbon product made? Could I make something at home?

a top carbon product no. If your after a general background knowledge just go to Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_(fiber)

Yes, you can make things in carbon at home. And it will work. It may not look as good as a ‘professionally’ made item but so what!

That would be “carbon fibre“.
Happy to help with your further education. 😉

There are two fundamentally important facts that make carbon fibre a “good” material:

1) High Specific strength. Not the use of the word “specific”. In this case, this indicates that carbon fibre is strong for its mass. This is important, in that you can make a strong bike out of literally anything, but that it will be lighter and smaller when made out of carbon fibre.

2) It is a material that is laminated form layers, and as such, the finished part can have a different strength and a different stiffness in any given axis. Unlike say a lump of metal, which unless specifically machined, has the same strength in any direction. This means, that when properly designed and manufactured, the strength can be utilised in the most useful direction, rather than “wasted” in directions that do not carry loads etc

Now, the down side:

3) the fact it is an engineered and laminated material means the strength of the finished material depends highly on the way it is manufactured. It is easy to accidentally get voids in the material, or the resin to fibre ratio wrong, or lots of other factors, and as such, it’s easy to make parts that look strong but actually aren’t.

Plenty of people have made “homemade” carbon bikes, but i suspect that without access to the proper design methods (including fibre loading simulation) and with limited tooling budgets and manufacturing capability (ie autoclaves, laser cutters etc) there frames are going to be pretty much as heavy as an alluminium frame, because they cannot ustilise the absolute strength of the material.

Maxtorque is 100% right. I don’t make any claims for lightness of the frames I’ve made, that was never the reason for doing it. If you want a light, safe from, go and buy one. At home, you have to err on the safe side, which means extra layers (and weight).
If, however, you enjoy learning how to make things, have a go. There are lots of non-safety critical things you can make (eg mud-guards) that will teach you about the properties of carbon.