I mentioned in the General forum that I was going to start a little project to attempt to create a carbon juliet. With moving cross country, having a child, and trying to save some money, the prospect of being able to buy an Elite pair of glasses is not going to happen.

However, I am a carbon fiber fiend and need a fix, so I thought that I would try to make my own carbon Oakleys. The Juliet is far and away my favorite, so it's a good place to start.

My plan is to first redo the earstems in carbon. These should be relatively easy. After that I might tackle trying to redo the primary orbitals in carbon. This thread will document my attempts.

Since someone will ask, I get my carbon fiber fabric from eBay, I use West System epoxy for bonding (available at most boating stores) and everything is done by hand with a jewelers saw, dremel tool and sandpapers.

Earstems:

First we have to do some basic carbon layup. I measured up my existing earstem with some calipers to get the overall dimensions, cut out pieces from my roll of fabric to get a big enough overall piece, and then started to build up a "block" of compressed fabric from which I can cut the shape. This pic shows the block halfway through. I needed a fair number of layers to get the required thickness.



Once that was cured, I traced out my earstem with a scribe and started cutting with my jewelers saw.



Here we see the rough blank. The next step will be to more accurately shape the "top-down" profile and get that correct, and then move to the side profile. All of this shaping will be done with the dremel or small hand files.




More to come....

How are you building the "Compressed Block" of carbon fiber? Wouldn't you need a vacuum system to compress it or some sort of pressure system? Aso, when sanding the stems down to thin them, won't the fabric frey and lose it's weave pattern? I have dealt with fiberglass a lot, but not carbon and am curious since you use an epoxy instead of a polyester resin to build it up...Should be very similar I would assume. Good write up and I am anxious to see the finished piece

Very exciting stuff and good work so far. This will probably be one of the more time consuming projects thus far. Well done!

Very interesting, keep us posted and good luck.

To answer some questions.

Polyester resin can be used, but the 2-part epoxy is far superior IMO. I used polyester with fiberglass and it's nasty. The epoxy gives higher strength, doesn't smell nearly as bad and is a bit easier to work with.

Carbon fiber, once fully cured with the epoxy, is a weird material. It's soft, in the sense that you can cut and shape it pretty easily, but also hard in that it doesn't fray or fall apart. You do have to make sure the epoxy full penetrates the fabric.

The way I did this was to layup the fabric, wetting each with epoxy as I put them down. One all my layers were down, I simply used by hands to gently squeeze out excess epoxy, and then placed a heavy flat weight on it.

Doing it this way will look different, as you won't have visible "weave" all the around, like with a tube. Instead this will end up with a noticeable weave on top and bottom, but the rounded sides where it's shaped more will have a more solid appearance with waves in it, kind of like a damascus knife blade.

I'll be updating with more pics as I go along, but be patient!

This is definitely going to be a thread to watch! Great work so far!


~Yukio

Good luck!

I'm very interested in seeing the project progress...awesome work!

Couldn't you essentially form the arm from the pressed/layered part and then wrap it for the final piece to give it the complete weave??

you could wrap the final form, in theory, but on these really small parts it's *very* hard to get the fabric to wrap and stay down. The fabric can do a radius only so small before it distorts or starts to fray and fall apart.

I'll have to see how the part looks once formed up, but I think it will actually look really cool.

Should have time to work on this over the long weekend, so I'll update when I have stuff to show!

(And from those teaser shots that were on Oakley.com, it looks to me like they are doing a fancy version of what I'm trying. Take a big block and machine out your form. They just have $million CNC machines and I have a dremel and sandpaper. :)

The topic of strength came up by someone. I've never done anything scientific, but this stuff gets REALLY strong very quickly. I've done little parts with just 2-3 layers and even then it becomes extremely difficult to bend by hand. When you get to 5 or 6 it's amazingly stiff, even though it's about 2mm thick.

My earstem part at it's thickest is about 20 layers. While I'm just totally guessing, I'm pretty sure the carbon earstem will be lighter than the xmetal, and easily as strong.

I could imagine it to be quite light. Sounds like fun. I need to mess with carbon, but haven't found a good supplier that people have had great dealings with. I want to mold all sorts of stuff in carbon fiber. I see a lot of it on the VW forum, but honestly it looks hoakie for the most part since people aren't trying to get the best ultimate end finish and wind up painting or wrapping it. I want natural carbon with a clean high gloss epoxy finish. I have the clear 2 part epoxy, but need the cloth and base resin

Had a little time to do some work on this and got one of the earstems formed. I need to do a lot of hand sanding to get the finish really smooth and drill the "O" out, but it's getting there.

It's almost impossible to get a really good picture of the texture in something this small, but when wet (or gloss coated like it will be in the final product) it looks pretty sweet.

I'm going to get the other side formed up and then do the final finishes and try putting it back together.

What an awesome project Paul!

Keep it up & keep us posted!

This is awesome, I can't wait to see how it turns out!

That's one of the most awesome things I've seen all week.
Are you going to be offering these up for the low, low price of $2500 each? =P


~Yukio

This looks awesome Paul. I'll be following the project with interest!
Will you be planning to sleeve the screw holes with a metal/nylon insert of some sort?

Best of luck!

In looking at the stock arm, the hole for the pivot is just a hole. The screw engages in the orbital only. So my plan is to simply drill a hole the same size as the stock arms and it should work the same.

I need to do a little more forming (mainly on the "backside" of the O to get it flatter) and then I'll mount it up. If it fits nicely, I'll do the clearcoat and take some more pics.

Hopefully this weekend I can get at least one side complete to show you all.


As a sidenote, in my hand the carbon stem feels about half the weight of the xmetal one. I've got some ideas on how to do the main orbitals. That will be quite challenging and I think I'll have to make it slightly different than the real thing (maybe forgoing the riveted flexible center), but I'll give it a try eventually. I've already got a spare set of Juliet lenses. I think a full carbon Juliet would be ridiculously awesometastic.

you are my hero. very nice man.
and am looking foward of the finaly piece.

This project is definitely monumental. Unique idea and materials not used on a custome before. So major congrats on all of that. From what you've accomplished thus far, I don't see any reason to doubt you won't complete the full frame.

I am always impressed with those that have had the chance to build some knowledge and comfort level with other tools and materials to do some of this custom stuff.

Now we just need to source out a wood craftsman to help build a full wood frame. We should do a realy wood Monsterdog in paying homage to the frame largely ignored by the artist or special series.

Ok, I have progress to report. I have both arms done at this point, all they need is some slight sanding and a gloss clearcoat. The carbon texture didn't come out quiet as defined as I'd like, but it still looks pretty cool.

I moved on to doing the main body. I disassembled my existing pair and, using some molding clay that I had, formed a two piece mold. I have a top and bottom half, and the plan is to use a fair number of layers to build up the shape at the desired thickness. I will then put the top mold on and give it some pressure, which hopefully will get me a close approximation of the shape. Then it will be a matter of cutting out the shape and profiling all the edges to get the smoother curves. The hardest part will be cutting the inner channel that the lens sits in, but with a steady slow hand I think I can get that.

The only thing I won't try to reproduce is the nosebridge flex point. I might try cutting a slight line to give it the look, but it will be too hard to construct a functional copy of that by hand.

I'm probably going to make a few changes to the overall shape to make it a little simpler to form, but I think this will work. :)

I can't wait to see the finished product. Forget the Elites. This is the good stuff.

Thanks for the update, very interesting, good luck !

I also wanted to comment that in doing this project, I am really curious how Oakley is going to do their carbon versions. There are a lot of aspects to working with this material, with the vast bulk of the complications coming in the final finish.

When you start machining carbon blocks, you tend to get "between" the weaves and you lose some of the normal appearance that everyone is used to. To do a rounded and smooth organic shape like the Oakley's we are used to it will end up looking a little less "carbony" in all of the rounded areas.

My guess is that we'll start to see flatter, wider areas on their Elites so that the carbon shows off clearly. Or like with the Pit Boss, where they could do carbon earstems (because those are pretty wide). I'd actually be pretty surprised if they did a 100% carbon model.

But for me, the Juliets are the pinnacle, so that's where I decided to go. :)

Yeah, there's a whole lot of considerations when making CF glasses, but Oakley's got a top flight engineering company working with them, so it should turn out great.

There've been many CF sunglasses made in the pass (both full frame and temples only), so I'm sure Oakley can at least match what they've already done.

got some more stuff to show. I started on the main body and have the primary shape in place and cured up now (with just the first 4 layers). The next steps will be to add probably a dozen more layers to get the overall thickness to where it needs to be. After that, we'll cut out the overall shape, cut out the lens holes, and then do a little machining to give the edges a rounded profile.

I'll have some time to work on this tonight and hopefully will have a fully cured, full thickness blank to work with tomorrow.