XCR Carbon Fibre Skinning Starter Kit

The advantage to clear-coating (lacquering) is that you don't need to spend as long flatting and polishing the very hard epoxy. Instead, you take it to a reasonable finish quite quickly and then clearcoat it - you'll get an excellent gloss from the clear coat, along with UV stability and if you do want to flat and polish the clear coat it's easier to polish than epoxy. The dissadvantage, if you're using the High Tempertaure version of the kit is that you're unlikely to find a high temperature clear coat and so although the part might be able to take high temepratures (up to 180°C) the clear coat won't and may discolour or deteriorate.

Hi Ray, yes, the XCR skinning process is tough enough for daily 'real world' applications like you're describing. For maximum longevity, it will be important to ensure a good bond onto your original plastic parts so don't skimp on the prep: give a really good key and - ideally - do a small test to check the quality of the bond from the resin to your components. Different plastics can be easier or harder to bond to. If you want to have total confidence in the job it's worth trying to rip a sample of resin/reinforcement off the component. It won't be impossible (with most thermoplastics) but it should be very difficult.

As for the Alufibre, yes, that's no problem. The reinforcement is buried within the resin anyway so actually makes no difference to the durability of the 'skin'. Also, the Alufibre is 100% UV stable so makes a good choice as a cosmetic, exterior use, reinforcement for skinning.

From your description, I'm not 100% clear on why you would not just skin the whole surface and then apply the velcro over the skinned surface because this would be much simpler and would also add strength to the 3D printed part right where it might be needed (i.e. under a fixing point) but I'll assume there is something about design that I'm not aware of that makes skinning these areas undesirable. However, do think again about whether it would be better to skin the whole part.

Assuming that we really can't skin these areas then yes, the approach would be to apply no basecoat to these areas and then when applying the fabric and resin, you should stop (as best you can) where the basecoat ends. It won't be easy to make a neat job of this; the fibre will have a loose edge and the clear resin will run over onto the unskinned area. Continue with the process, trying to be as neat as you can but don't worry too much about the edge. Once you have finished the skinning resin application and everything has fully cured (hard), it will be a case of 'cutting' the carbon skin using hand tools (like hacksaw blade, file, abrasive paper) in order to trim it to a neat edge.

The roll of fabric is 1m (1000mm) x 300mm. However, don't expect to be able to use every last millimetre; a little fraying at the edges is unavoidable with a dry carbon cloth.

The Modelling clay used in the video is a standard high grade modelling clay/plasticine. The one used and recommended by us is the Newplast Plasticine.

Yes you can use this kit to skin over the foam block.

At the moment I'm afraid we don't have an option to purchase the skinning starter kit with the ProFinish carbon fibre. The closest thing you could do would be to purchase 1sqm of the ProFinish fabric and then put together the resins (XCR Basecoat and XCR Coating Resin) plus the ancillaries yourself. Sorry for any inconvenience on this but we don't have the ProFinish in the 300mm 'mini tube' used in the kit.

Yes, you could use this kit to skin boat parts. Once cured the XCR resin is highly resistant to water and in fact is also recommended and used for coating wood on boat decks etc.

As for the red gelcoat, the black basecoat should be sufficiently strong in colour to block out the red from the existing gelcoat. If you did find that after the first application of basecoat you could still see the red colour showing through then you could add a second application of basecoat although it's unlikely this would be necessary.

The fabric in the Skinning starter kit is a high quality 2x2 twill 3k carbon fibre fabric at 210gsm weight.

Yes, the basecoat included in the skinning kit would have no difficulty bonding to properly prepared (keyed) car bodyfiller.

Although it is possible to skin over a release coated panel then separate the layer, there are a few issues that make this difficult to work compared to moulding and making a panel by other means.

A single skin is rarely strong enough to be a stand alone panel so you would need to modify the skinning process to add extra layers of fabric to achieve the necessary strength.

Secondly, being moulded on the outside of the original panel, there will be a dimensional difference from the original - in this case the skinned carbon will be bigger. This is made worse when extra layers of fabric are need to make the panel stiff enough. Depending on the design, the extra size may or may not be an issue.

Although it is possible to use the kit over a leather part, it will become rigid and loose its flex once the resin has cured. For some leather trimmed car interior parts this would not be a problem. However, if the material still needs to remain flexible, then this kit is not suitable.

... I want to apply this on my motorcycle parts. I heard that when ageing it could turn yellow with the UV.

The UV resistance of the XCR epoxy resin is as good or better than any epoxy on the market. There is extensive UV blocking in the resin which makes it highly resistant to the yellowing you're talking about. No one can say that an epoxy is 100% UV 'proof' but this is a close second! For motorcycle parts I would have no hesitation in stating that yellowing should not be a concern in normal use for many years.

As for water resistance, the resin itself (once fully cured) is totally resistant to water and would not be affected by it. If you have exposed (cut) edges then they may be susceptible to water-ingress over a very long period of time but you could avoid this by coating cut edges with some more resin to 'seal' them.

XCR Epoxy Coating resin will not attack the PLA itself so can be used to coat the part no problem. We recommend keying and cleaning the surface to help get maximum adhesion of the resin.

The XCR resin in the Skinning Kit naturally produces a high gloss finish. To achieve a good quality matt finish, realistically the best method is to finish the skinned part by having it professionally sprayed with a matt/satin lacquer. That way you will get a nice and even matt finish over the part.

Yes, certainly an additional layer of material over a flexible lid will help to stiffen and strengthen it.

You can either polish the part or lacquer it, so in your case, getting a professional spray shop to lacquer it for you will take out some of the work and ensure a great finish.

...This will be fitting inside a vehicle will the finished article be UV resistant or will I need to spray it after with a UV resistant coating?

For use inside a vehicle, the UV stability of the special XCR resin used in this kit should be more than adequate to keep the parts looking great for years to come. Additional clear-coat is an option and will further improve the UV stability but in most situations the excellent stability of XCR resin makes any further protection unnecessary.

For a double sided object (such as wing, rudder etc), it is easier to skin one side at a time. You will need to choose where you will have a join line for each layer of fabric.

One technique that works well is to wrap the first layer of fabric on the first side, onto the underside for a short distance before trimming the edge. When you do your initial sand and de-nib, you can smooth out where the fabric ends. The second piece of fabric is then the only piece that needs a neat cut edge as you lay it on top of the overlap from the first layer. This way you should not have any gaps in the fabric at the join line.

Yes you can, although you will still need to key the surface with sandpaper to aid adhesion. This may well remove some of the paint layers depending how thick and tough the paint is.

Yes you can skin over metal surfaces; most metal surfaces are suitable. For best adhesion, we recommend keying the surface with a coarse sandpaper then giving the surface a thorough de-grease. You should then have the perfect surface ready for application of the XCR Basecoat.

The Skinning process will add a thickness of approximately 0.75mm on top of the original part. This will vary slightly depending on how much resin is used and how much sanding is done to finish the part.

Yes you can skin your model RC plane with this kit. You will need to take care when you come to the stage of coating with resin as the more resin you use, the heavier the overall plane will be thus we recommend extra care is taken during that stage

For some super light aircraft you may well add too much weight and would be better off considering a lighter carbon fibre cloth such as our 90g Plain Weave Carbon Fibre which we stock specifically for light-weight applications such as R/C planes and UAV/drone applications. Another alternative would be to switch to a more traditional light weight Woven Glass Fabric like our 25g or 100g woven glass which are very often used for skinning R/C planes.

Although our Carbon Fibre Skinning Starter Kit includes some of the same materials used for laminating a part in a mould, you would be better off using our Carbon Fibre Laminating Starter Kit because this includes a better selection of materials for making a carbon fibre part (such as your RC model cover) when you have a mould to lay-up into. Carbon Fibre Skinning, which this kit is designed for, is where you lay carbon fibre permanently onto an existing part.

The standard resin is fine up to 80°C. However, many areas of the engine bay can, at times, get hotter than this. Without any accurate temperature data for your engine bay, we would always air on the side of caution and recommend going for the high temperature kit.

ProFinish is identical to 2/2 twill carbon fabric however it has a special very faint coating on the back of the fabric which holds it together and stops it from fraying when cut or distorting when laid into a part. If you need to ‘relax’ the fibre (to get around more compound surfaces) it can be softened with the use of a hair dryer or heat gun.

If you know that you will need to make cut lines (joins) in the carbon then ProFinish is an excellent choice, if you’re unsure or know that you don’t need/want this stiff backing then just go with the normal 2/2 twill. For more curved shapes I would definitely go with 2/2 twill, for flatter parts or very complicated shapes (where you will make up the surface using multiple pieces of fabric) then go for the ProFinish.