Careful with your carbon fiber

[Bartman]

Just a heads up, we all know carbon fiber is a very dangerous material, you shouldn't allow it to enter your body as the body has no natural inclination to reject it. Inhaling CF dust is very toxic for the lungs and even a CF splinter in your finger won't push up to the surface creating a very painful point until you dig it out.

I was just using a torch to melt epoxy holding a carbon fiber tube in a steel tube and the carbon began to smoke as the epoxy caught fire. A small amount of smoke came off the tube before I could wrap it up in a wet rag and yet the house was immediately filled with the toxic odor. Had it been a full blown fire it would have been overwhelming almost immediately.

So a quick and friendly word of caution, if your shop catches fire and your heli's are in the blaze, don't hesitate to get out. The smoke will be much more toxic than any wood fire you might have experienced and you might not make it out. We've still got all the windows open and it happened an hour ago. The shop still smells.

Bart

 

[DucktileMedia]

Use a heat gun next time. yeah, CNC'ing your frames was always worrisome to me. I would wear a respirator, wet down the sheets, and have the dust collector. but still it always get in everything. All that fine dust goes past the bag in the Delta dust collector designed for wood working. And I come home and my wife tells me I smell like metal and plastic. Not good stuff indeed. Even the G10 I use in my parts is really bad stuff.

 

[Bartman]

i had started with a heat gun and then moved on to a MAPP gas torch . just a little smoke and the whole house was overrun by the fumes. it was extremely uncomfortable and it was barely anything!

 

[jbrumberg]

A lot of builders familiar with CF material cut it outside. They recommend taping over the cut line prior to cutting and/or cutting it wet, underwater? to minimize the CF dust particles. It is very nasty stuff in ingest or inhale.

 

[jes1111]

Good general advice but, strangely, MDF dust and aluminium dust are far more dangerous. I use a wet tile saw to cut down large CF sheets and to cut CF tubing to length. On the CNC an efficient shop-vac (with a sub-5 micron filter) attached to the head takes the debris away (CF and MDF). For cleaning up edges I always use wet-n-dry with plenty of water.

 

[Bartman]

A lot of builders familiar with CF material cut it outside. They recommend taping over the cut line prior to cutting and/or cutting it wet, underwater? to minimize the CF dust particles. It is very nasty stuff in ingest or inhale.

i do all of my cutting outside now and will do only the smallest little bits of work inside over the garbage can immediately followed by vacuuming.

 

[jbrumberg]

I am no longer allowed to (or I should say that I should not be) messing around with two stage epoxies, or MDF, or CF stuff due to medical reasons. And now thanks to jes1111 I suspect that I probably shouldn't be messing around with cutting or messing with aluminum anymore as well. Thanks for that information. A person just can not have any fun anymore:dejection: