Hi, prices are the same in my city to buy these materials. What would be better, 4mm carbon fiber or the 6.35mm aluminum?
I will cut them in my LR3, so I believe cuting carbon fiber would be easier, right? I have no experience with both.
Thank you
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Have you ever cut carbon fiber on your LR3?
Given the choice between 4mm CF XZ plates and 6.35mm aluminum plates, I’d chose the aluminum.
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Carbon fiber composite has amazing tensile strength to weight ratios. It is not rigid though which makes it less suitable for the XZ plates.
Annectodally, if you get a carbon fiber hood for your car, the manufacturer will always (always!) recommend that you install hood pins, even if you keep the factory latching mechanism. The reason is that the factory latch is in the front center of the hood, and Bernoulli’s principle (which is what makes aircraft wings work to carry the aircraft) will pull up the corners of the hood and rip it off of your car, delaminating the CF if it has to to pull it from the center catch. With real CF hoods those pins aren’t just there for “because race car.” This also applies to 4th generation Toyota Supras which have aluminum hoods from the factory, so take that for what it’s worth in rigidity.
CF is likely to be more rigid than, say, printed plastic at the same thickness, but I don’t know how much more. (Also for those of us on the beta team who used printed plastic for the initial LR4 beta and release candidate designs, we printed 6.35 mm thick.
On the flipside of the argument though, we got some pretty good results from the printed plates. The LR3 printed printed plastic plates are even thicker in order to achieve the required stiffness, but aren’t viable in the LR4 design.
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