Carbon sunroof panel plug for a particular car here. Was going to do a whole writeup/tutorial, but figured you’d all be bored and said screw it just post pics. Just a taste of some of my easier composite work.
Plug rough
Plug sealed and polished
[Elevator music]little be of tooling gel, little big of laminate mold making, little bit of bagging, little bit o resin infusion[/elevator music]
Carbon SR skin done and out(orange mold below it made from plug pictured above)
“Dry carbon”(no gelcoat) for all you automotive carbon homos
Lost about 35lbs by removing the entire sunroof, and this panel replaces what filled the hole up…that’s 10.5 oz total weight now :clap
It’s not “dry carbon”, no such thing really. Just nomenclature some ricer started because it looks that way with proper resin/composite ratio :lol But no, not clearing it unless the customer requests it to be done so. Most of my composite work is not gelcoated or cleared like ricer boize like it to be
Vlad there’s over two dozen coats of wax between the plug and the mold, and a dozen coats of PVA release agent on the mold(the haze spots you see on the top of the carbon there) it washes right off with water or acetone.
I made some small pieces with great success and will be attempting a sunroof plug on the jetta as well, and if I am good, making a plug of the trunk lid, and making a simple panel I can DZUS in place.
I whats the reason for shaping it out of wood, to make a mold out of then go from there. Why not just take the oem piece of glass, and lube her up and make the fiberglass mold right from that? Bag the glass/fiberglass (this is where I think the problem might be, and reason you used wood…) at a lower pressure as not to shatter the glass. Pop the glass out, add fiberglass to the back to stiffen it up if need be and gelcoat it? But I am sure you have a good reason, so I am all ears.
Also what did you use to cover the wood/body filler on the plug you made the mold from? Just epoxy, or autobody clear? Then wetsand/buff/polish?
Ohh and go fix your spelling mistakes mister! Apparently you need A: more sleep, or B: a better respirator setup cause your high as a kite!
My safety equipment is worth more than most of the parts in your car son , so i’ll blame it on lack of sleep.
Laminated MDF that’s shaped. Can’t use this cars’ OEM glass to mold off of because it’s substantially smaller than the opening with the remainder taken up by a very large rubber gasket(which you can not mold off of). This is not a glass panel replacement, it’s a complete plug that replaces the entire sunroof mechanism.
Typically I’d CNC these molds but this one was too large for my smaller machine and my larger machine isn’t up and running yet. I use either MDF for one-off stuff like this, or for ultra detail production molds and plugs I’ll use carbon foam(expensive). Making a negative mold by hand with double contours(left to right and front to back) is near impossible to do accurately on this type of part, so you must first make a positive plug to pull a negative mold from.
Mold is sanded to shape and sealed with polyester resin, sanded/buffed/polished to a mirror finish thereafter to pull the mold from.
And you’re steps for making a mold off a plug are all azz-backwards. Over a plug it goes tooling gel, chopped glass, woven roving, reinforcements(ribs) THEN demold. Never vacuum bag a mold with TG surface, you’ll get massive print though which will transpose to your parts. It takes days to weeks to make a mold. Took 10-12 days to make this one(and repair the TG when the PVA failed)
Thanks folks. FWIW, there’s really nothing in automotive composite I can’t do, aside from crap like wheels and high tech compressed graphite engine shit. Panels, hoods, aero, full bodies, etc. Carbon pushrods and suspension arms(DSR/CSR stuff only), seats, list goes on. If you have the $$ to pay I have the capabilities
thanks for the big reply. I forgot about the gasket. so yeah i can see now if you made something to replace the glass, it would be short bigtime. Gotcha. what are you using tooling gel for? A mold release?
edit you calling what i call gelcoat (like the paint on shit) tooling gel? LOL i think i am on the same page then if thats the case
this is the thing about composite work, its not too hard to lay it, especially when you don’t care much about the weave lining up right, but the plug/mold work is very time consuming and expensive. eventually I’ll have to make something like this myself just to go through it all and learn more about it.
Adam, think this is something you could do for t-tops as well?
AS much as I love my ttops at times, for the most part I hate them and I and many other Z31 guys have been looking at possible Carbon fiber replacements/plugs if you will
Obviously a CF replacement would require much more work as It would need to be “functional” and lock into place and be able to be taken off
Just like autobody paint. Shooting fancy colors and clear isn’t all that hard. But if the bodywork, prep and environmental variables aren’t all in check, the job looks like shit.
I made a little vac system, and made a bunch of little parts and cosmetic stuff for bikes and cars. nothing structural yet. The mold has to be strong. I set the system to 18-22 inch’s of mercury worth of vacuum. Sofar so good, the fabric lays nice and tight to my mold/overlay without deforming it from too much pressure. Simply took a 8 gal air tank used to airbag trucks, used NPT fittings to plumb a hose to the project and the pump system. Got a little electric motor, belt and pulley over to a GAST vacuum pump with a check valve in the middle (can suck air out of the tank but the tank cant draw it through the pump when its not running). Put a vac. pressure switch in the mix to control it because i always have tiny pinhole leaks on my bag seals, so if the pressure drops a little the 8 gal tank acts like a capacitor. Then when the tank drops too far, the pump kicks on puts a few inches of vac back in and shuts off. I know its not good to have the project expanding/contracting a little like that but I made the system for like $75 and I am not building airplanes here so it works! Its fun and simple to play around with, give it a shot!
notice you said infusion. You lay the CF dry, then suck the epoxy in one side until it wets out to the other right? I understand that’s the best way as to not over saturate the piece, but does it take a lot more vac to suck it through? I wondered if my lil rig could do small stuff like that. Also what do you do to mix the resin? do the math and get an est on square footage and mix xx amount for that, as not to waste epoxy?
, so i’ll blame it on lack of sleep.