Best rims ever

[Raptor13x]

^ How the hell did you make your own rims?

[KU_MechE]

The great thing about carbon wheels is curb rash is no longer relevant. If you hit a curb, your wheel splinters and fails.

[KU_MechE]

Originally Posted by Raptor13x

^ How the hell did you make your own rims?

design aluminum molds, CNC aluminum into said mold, lay carbon. Then into the easy-bake autoclave.

[Raptor13x]

Damn, I'm short 1 CNC machine and an autoclave.

[shaidarharan]

Originally Posted by KU_MechE

design aluminum molds, CNC aluminum into said mold, lay carbon. Then into the easy-bake autoclave.

just make a couple extra sets for mr2s next time.

[classifiedjdm]

Originally Posted by KU_MechE

design aluminum molds, CNC aluminum into said mold, lay carbon. Then into the easy-bake autoclave.

carbon wheels are a much more extensive project than that actually. It's not like a carbon hood or fenders.

Wheels are made and laid under extremely high pressures. A wheel laid with a wet lay or pre-preg carbon wouldn't hold up very long, especially not at the high speeds the cars that they will most likely end up on will be traveling.

[KU_MechE]

Originally Posted by classifiedjdm

carbon wheels are a much more extensive project than that actually. It's not like a carbon hood or fenders.

absolutely.

I'd estimate we spent 1000-2000 hours in the process of design, FEA analysis, mold design, CNC programming, mold fabrication, mold prep (wetsand and polish), carbon layup, vacuum bagging, baking, etc.

We used pre-preg carbon and baked the wheels in an autoclave (pressure vessel/oven) at 200PSI + vacuum. It came out pretty good, but even at those pressures, we never got our carbon to look like formula 1's. The formula car this was designed for never did over 80mph, although we did run about 1.5Gs on the skidpad.

Overall, it took a ton of work. We'd work on the molds for 16 hours then throw them in the autoclave. The worst part was hanging around to take them out at the right time many hours later.