The IPD 501 Carbon project grew on the previous Mold project, this time tasking us to create a mold which we would use to make a carbon fiber layup. I was aware that the Penn Electric Racing team wanted some cooler (and lighter, more rigid) pedals for the car's brake and gas levers.

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My design went through a number of different iterations as I learned to accomodate the carbon fiber weave's limited ability to conform to sharp corners. I incorporated foam into my design so as to make a sandwich of carbon fiber with a foam core: this design is both ultra-lightweight and incredibly rigid.

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I first designed the part and the cavity in which the part would be molded using Solidworks. I used SolidCAM to generate the GCode to mill the cavity (although my part in particular was simple enough that it did not require CAM as it could have been done manually) and milled the mold from an MDF block on a ProtoTRAK.

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Once the mold was finished, I sealed it using wood/plaster sealer. I then laid on the various layers of carbon fiber and heat-formed foam, religiously applying epoxy to each layer. I placed the soaker and breather layers on top and then put the layup inside a vacuum bag. I used a vacuum to suck the air out and then let the layup cure for hours.

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Unfortunately, the mold was not sealed enough, and the epoxy had bonded the carbon fiber to the MDF mold, rendering the part impossible to demold. This failure was disappointing, but it revealed to me the difficulty of working with composites and layups as well as the importance of fully sealing a mold. I hope to get another shot at working with carbon fiber layups soon in the future.