Quote:
Originally Posted by Showdown
Mercx bicycles in Belgium has long used flax as a green replacement for carbon fiber (they forget the use of highly toxic resins but I digress) and has had phenomenal results.
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I'll have to look them up.
I was going to menti4on the resin used. In fact even if you use flax fiber in the normal infusion process the amount of waste produced is rather phenomenal. This in the form of disposable peel ply, flow mesh, flow spiral,vacuum bag, butyl sealing tape, flexible hose for the infusion, mixing cups, etc. Not to mention the waste resin and excess material cut off the part after curing. IIRC for the skid skid plate I mix 585g of resin, and less than half of that ends up in the buyers hands. The rest goes in my garbage can.
I don't know that toxicity with the resin is a problem. Certainly the one I am using produces no fumes or vapor or even odour. There are bio-based resins, however, that could be substituted as long as the associated loss of strength as temperature resistance could be tolerated.