Anyone know if I can get Carbon Fibre sheets, or some kind of sheets of something (Plastic) here in GP/Med that I can CNC shapes out of for RC stuff, need to make the Tricopter frame, and some FPV camera/transmitter brackets. Something about 1/8" thick should do?
If you can't find CF sheets, you might consider poly carb. sheet (picture frame glass substitute) found at Home Depot.
There is a plastic place over by the Chevy dealer on Biddle (?) that has every imaginable size and color of acrylic. If you want Lexan (polycarbonate), I'd get it from McMaster Carr (mcmaster.com). You can order 25/7 and they generally provide next day delivery to me at the ground rates. I've ordered as late as nine in the evening and had it the next day before noon. McMaster has every imaginable material if you want something else. I like working with delrin a lot. You won't like cutting CF in your CNC! I usually get CF from RCFoam.com How large a piece of plastic do you need? Last I knew, Redwood Glass here in GP had a scrap bin of FREE acrylic. They also have full sheets or will cut for a small fee. They mostly stock clear, but sometimes have partial sheets of other colors. ...Tiger
Thanks Tiger, yeah I buy a lot of McMaster stuff for my business, and and far as thier web site, if I ever ended up in a large organization in a position of power I would require all of my employees to surf and purchase from the McMaster web site so they could learn how a business website should really be setup! It's the best I have ever seen. I do like Delrin very much, and I have never worked with CF so I will heed your warning and stay away from it. I was actually a bit scared of it because it looks like it would be really bad for the flood coolant and getting into the ways, my ways have a teflon coating on them so everything makes me nervous. Quizno's uses Delrin rods to hold the condiment containers for your sandwhich. And I have had bad luck with extruded acrylic, seems to shatter too easy for structural use, but makes a good lens for lights.
Never worked with poly carb, just need something machinable that won't kill me, Beryllium Copper? And that can flex before breaking. Just doing the center section of Davids tricopter plans and camera mounts. I think Delrin should work, but I have never crashed delrin before.
CF is such cool stuff, but it's a material of last resort as far as I'm concerned. Almost the same for pcb material (G10/FR4). Even if you try to catch the CF with a vac, you really can't get it all. That and you need a HEPA filter because it goes right through a normal vac. Nasty stuff. Acrylic doesn't bend much before it breaks so without seeing what you're doing I don't know if it's a good choice or not. What's good about it is that it's cheap and available. Those are pretty nice features! Polycarbonate (lexan) is REALLY strong. You pretty much can't break it by bending. I use quite a bit of it and would use a lot more if you could laser cut it. The laser cuts it fine, but the edges and fumes are a mess. It does machine ok like most plastics, but here again I try not to run anything other than metal in the CNC's because of the coolant. I do keep one Haas dry most of the time so if I have to cut plastic, that's the machine of choice. Delrin is super neat stuff, but pretty expensive. Cuts like butter in a laser or the mill. My little quad frame is delrin and it's indestructable. The Parallax ELEV8 frame components (if you're following that) are delrin and they have never broken one. The other thing I use that is worth considering is ABS. Like delrin, it's really strong, a little cheaper, and very nice to work with. Cuts in the laser, but not as nice as delrin. Choices choices! ...Tiger
