Carbon Fiber & Thermoform Panel Mold Making
I manufactured all of the carbon fiber layup and thermoforming molds for the body panels on CWRU Motorsports’ SR24 competition vehicle. I machined all of them on a Laguna SmartShop 2 and did the CAM in HSMWorks.
Here’s one of the many molds I made - this one was made out of an expanding foam, because I was experimenting and seeing if it was cheaper than a typical insulation foam.
First, I made a wooden container in the rough shape of the panel for the foam to fill, and after extracting it, I machined it on the Laguna. The black texture in the after image is from Duratec, because the epoxy from the carbon fiber layup melts the foam.
Here’s our nose - this one was tricky because this design exceeded the Z height of the router table. To make it work, I made the mold in multiple layers and glued them together afterwards. I machined locating features to ensure accuracy.
I used the same locating feature trick for this thermoformed chain shroud mold. The shroud covered the 4WD chain on SR24 and prevented the driver from mistakenly hitting it. I had to machine this one out of MDF, because the pink panther foam would have melted in the thermoforming machine. While I mostly programmed the foam molds with finishing toolpaths, I had to rough this one out first because it was MDF. Then I finished with a lower tool engagement.
