Composite Materials Fabrication Handbook #1 (Composite Garage Series)

A good no nonsense guide to Composites

cool

Excellent !

There is almost anything about composites on internet. videos and articles are so many that you need just a few weeks of research to get an excellent theoritical basis. When the time to get your hands on composites comes, you 'll realize that all these cannot fill the gap between theory and practice. The only composite relevant source that stands right there is this book. Buy it, read it and just before you start designing a composite part open it again. Of course it's not complete. You will defenetly need Vol.2 but these two books can provide any information needed by the DIYer. The only thing that is not included is experience!!

I have bought a few composite 'kits' and made a few small objects from Carbon. But I wanted to go further and needed some advice. This book did not help unfortunately.With the internet swollen with videos and other bits of information, I found this book a bit redundant as I had seen it all before. It really if very basic, and anyone with any kind of basic workshop skills will feel the same.The health and safety part is common sense - wear a mask when sanding, and don't get the fibres on your skin.The 'finishing a part' is very basic - sanding the edges to make them smooth. Use a hacksaw to cut. Benefits of air tools over hand tools etc etc.The 'Demoulding' section was agonising - dont use metal because it will damage the mould. Be patient when removing the part etcThe workshop part is also so dry and unhelpful - "make sure you have enough space to work", we are told. Thanks!The pictures move painfully slowly.The book is useful if you intend on making exactly the same items as him, and the mouldless part was interesting but not very useful for most. Some information regarding compatibility of foams and resins was useful.This book totally misses any form of vacuum bagging, or resin infusion. It also misses using core materials to add strength or bulk - all of which I was looking for. It also doesn't investigate other forms of moulds, or even making split moulds and edging.If you are getting into Composites, I would buy one of the starter kits available and watch some of the many video tutorials on youtube. You will learn alot more.I am hoping another book can help me.

Wanberg appears to be the author who has writen more books than he has read. One mans opinions in his garage. A decent book on composites is the Glass Fiber Handbook by W H Warring.

As it states in its introduction, this book is intended as a PRACTICAL, hands-on guide to learning the basics of working with composites. It spends almost no time on designing composite structures and instead focuses on the actual techniques you need to learn in order to build those structures yourself. It begins by describing the most common materials and how and why they are used, then moves on to safety (very important) and helpful tools, and then into how to actually make some basic composite structures via various wet layup techniques.To me, one of the strong points of this book is that it isn't too discipline-specific, i.e. it doesn't seem to have a bias toward any one type of structure. Almost every other book from which I've tried to learn some of these basic techniques has been aimed toward building either an airplane or a boat of some sort, and used examples (and terminology) specific to them. This book might have just a *slight* bias toward automobiles, but that's it. By showing how to lay up a flat panel, a tube and a couple of other structures, it shows several basic techniques that can be applied to a wide variety of projects. It also shows how to make different types of molds, the pros and cons of different types of resin (and how to choose the best one depending on what you're trying to build) and different types of reinforcement. And it shows a variety of finishing techniques as well, which I've rarely seen in any of the books I've encountered in the five-plus years I've been working with composites--including a couple I *wish* I had learned much sooner.Another strong point is the clear COLOR photographs, which are consistently well composed and well lit, so you can actually see what's really going on. Every photo and diagram also has a descriptive caption, which are consistently excellent. My only quibble, and it's a very small one, is that the photos sometimes run ahead of the text by a couple of pages. But even if you just follow the photos (there are hundreds of them), you will still get a very good idea of the process being shown. One other observation: Many of the photos are arranged six to a page (two across and three down) and read in order down the left-hand column, then back to the top of the right-hand column. It was a bit confusing at first, as I would've expected to read across the page first and then down to the next row. But again, that's easy enough to get used to--and the photos are numbered.The author's language is conversational and informal throughout, a perfect match for a practical guide. Also, the paper is thick and glossy, the layout is clean, uncluttered and easy to read, and the perfect-bound construction seems well done. So the book should last for quite a while.If you're looking for a book that covers many of the basics, but geared toward aviation and with a somewhat more theoretical approach, check out Composite Basics by Andrew C. Marshall. But if you're looking for a consistently superior guide to the basics of working with composites, Composite Materials Fabrication Handbook is the one you want.NOTE: This book (Fabrication Handbook #1) covers basic wet layups only. It does NOT cover prepregs, compression molding, vacuum bagging or resin infusion. However, those topics and others are covered in Composite Materials Fabrication Handbook #2 by the same author, which is just as good as Handbook #1 and also worth every penny. Do what I did and just buy both at the same time. You won't regret it.

Someone once wrote, the main thing is to keep the main thing a main thing. This is the handbook that gonna give you the good basic overall picture. If the one wants to go deeper into topic, I believe other sources would need to be find. Or just get your hands dirty …

Excellent pics help explain the text. Like a community college course in a small textbook!! Great!!!

Excelente libro, explica detalladamente todas las técnicas básicas. Desde herramientas, tipos de fibra cuidados y procesos de manufactura, totalmente recomendable!!

le foto sono molto utili e fatte bene e descrivono passo dopo passo le azioni da intraprendere. Manuale pratico con indicazioni utili per l'attrezzatura da utilizzare e i prodotti però non sempre facili da individuare. Per una più semplice e completa spiegazione sia pratica che teorica consiglio il libro di Emiliano Benvenuti semplice e intuitivo, con tabelle e descrizione dei materiali e prodotti con le caratteristiche fisiche e chimiche di facile comprensione. Le tecniche attuabili sono descritte in maniera facile e applicabile sin da subito.