Matt Carbon Fiber

Now I have collected nearly all the carbon parts I want for my SD, (it's taken me about four years of patiently searching for used pieces for e bay and this forum), I am considering getting them all unified in a matt finish. I saw a Confederate Wraith a few years ago and all their carbon is finished matt and it is a fantastic look, even more understated than the black look that carbon delivers. Not sure i light the shine that most carbon has - although it does look good in the sun when the weave really kick off.

Any option has to have the ability to mask off areas to achieve some sort of surface design or lettering with the gloss/matt effect.

Anyway, I have three options I reckon and just wanted to know if there is any advice out there or experience of doing this.

1. My least preferred option is to apply a matt laquer to everything. It will scratch off and be liable to looking shabby over time.

2. Next is vapour/fine shot blasting to take off the gloss surface.

3. This is to do it the old fashioned way and just wet and dry everything. Not sure if I could achieve a totally uniform surface with this method though and the masking would be the hardest. Also the longest and most arduous.

What do you all think?

I found this for you Bic,,,,good question,,,

http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index ... 05730.html

How about getting the pieces sprayed with a low gloss (matte) clear - maybe with a matte sealant too? Well, for what its worth, that's how I understand the car guys do it.

I would think any reputable auto paint place could do it - as I'm sure you know - prep is everything.

The way its done with fishing rods with a true matt finish is sanding, not with paper with fine grinding stones and lots of water, the blanks are run through a machine with twin grinding wheels running at high speed....
Stones are used as abrasive paper will 'pick' fibres and deposit abrasive material in the carbon, oh and the more times you sand the more you weaken the blank,The strongest is unsanded,
Quite how you could do this with carbon panels on a bike i dont know, lots of hard work with good quality wet and dry paper and lots of water maybe the only way......

Oh and carbon bike frames are matt finished by fine bead blasting, possible with bike panels but you need someone who knows what they are doing and the right grade of glass to get the finish you want

Good link maddog, they're on the same track as me anyway!

My preference is for bead/sand blasting. I'm watching a compressor and sandblast kit on Ebay right now as I've always wanted one.

I do know the exact kit I really need but it's way out of my ability to afford it and I don't know any toolmaker who would let me go in and use their set up for bike parts. In the injection moulding/toolmaking business there are a few ways to achieve a matt finish on the inside of a metal tool cavity. It can be done with spark eroding the cavity with the electrode but on pilot tooling where the cavity is CNCd out instead of spark eroded the finish can be done with water/vapour blasting. It's the same as sand/beadblasting but the grit is suspended in a lot of water and so it's much more controllable. The finish is dependent on the size of grit.

I have a few old paint guns from my spraying days so I might set up an experiment to see if I can use a paint gun with water and grit in it at high pressure and see if this works. Depends if the gun can cope with the fine grit without jamming the needles.

I would look into shell blasting. They use crushed walnut shells which are a lot less abrasive.
I'd be somewhat wary of any type blasting however, if the clear coat layer is quite thin, it'll cut through and fook up your panel. It might also be quite difficult to get an even finish over the whole panel.

I'd be tempted to do a test with some 1200 grit wet and dry, with lots of soapy water and see if you can get an even finish.

Hi Millar.

Done quite a bit of testing with wet and dry. Definitely can be done and although it's time consuming it's not that hard to achieve an even matt surface. Actually it's pretty easy to then polish it back up to a high gloss finish again if you want, depends on the quality of the gel top coat though. Problem I have with this method is that I want to mask off the KTM and Superduke lettering, (or some other surface design), and leave this high gloss so that when the mask is removed the design is visible only with the matt/gloss difference. Using wet and dry technique does not allow this, I've tried unsuccessfully. You just cannot get a crisp line at the edge of the mask and the wet and dry paper cuts through the mask material really quickly, especially at the edges.

Maybe the only way is to to make all the surfaces matt, then mask the negative areas of the surface and spray a top coat gloss lacquer to achieve the high gloss letter effect. But I feel that this is cheating, I want to do it all in the carbon finish.

If you can find someone who can blast with the superfine walnut that might just work...

http://www.kramerindustriesonline.com/b ... shells.htm

I wouldn't attempt it with a small kit, you can't get enough of a spray to get an even finish.

Maybe Scotchbrite pads. They make different grits.
This may sound wierd, what about reverse tempates. Sand the whole surface, reverse mask and spray the high gloss areas as the final step.
Just a thought, no experiance in this regard, or many others.

We prep all of our composite parts for paint with a soda blaster. It leaves a nice flat finnish and you don't have to worry about removing too much material.

What's the "soda" part of the process? Is it like bicarbonate of soda powder or a fizzy liquid? Or what? Sounds like it's what I'm after.