Best Place For Composite Supplies?

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Yukon@K-9 Rocket Tech

Student, Drone and Rockets, Aspiring Engineer
Joined
Jun 21, 2019
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Location
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I have been making a variety of composite parts for fun lately, and want to get more seriously into it. I just used epoxy resin for table tops (I know your not supposed to, but I just did it for the sake of learning) and small rolls of carbon fiber from amazon. I want to find a place where I can purchase a sizable roll and proper epoxy for composite at an affordable price. I'm still a noob so all these sellers have been a bit overwhelming :eek:. Where is the best place for purchasing in bulk (Bulk as in 5 yards lol)? I'm not looking for A grade composites or fancy stuff like tow weave, just your plain or twill weave at a acceptable weave quality. Thank you in advance!
 
I'll second uscomposites.com. As long as you're not making something truly extreme (i.e., Mach 2+ and 40K ft or something like that) their epoxies and curatives are as good as almost anyone else's, and their prices are as low as I've found anywhere. Even on fleabay. :)

Actually tabletop epoxy *can* be used for some projects. My mentor (Jim Mitchell) used thick DER-331 epoxy resin (and a thick curative) for all his projects, including a 3/4 scale Nike Smoke. It takes some work to get it into the cloth, though. Laminating resin has "reactive diluents" added that will react with the curative; and they make the resin about as thin as warm pancake syrup.

Last time I ordered from US Composites I got a half-gallon of laminating resin, plus enough slow curative for half the resin, and enough fast curative for the other half. You can use either one or a mixture. Use fast curative in an unheated shop/garage on cold days, slow curative on a miserable summer day, and a mixture at other times.

Best -- Terry
 
I'm a big fan of System 3 (www.systemthree.com, on Amazon and also in some Ace stores) for laminating tubes. The Silvertip resin is really easy to work with and gives nice results. Their T-88 is a great glue, though not quite thick enough for fillets. And they have tech support on their website.
 
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