lightweight material

[cb5331]

i am trying to build a box out of the lightest material possible, but at the same time the material has to be strong enough to handle 2 15" subwoofers. could something like 1" polypropylene sheets do the trick, or 3/4" abs plastic? i guess what i am saying is that i need a lightweight, very rigid material. any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Buy the time you get ABS or Polypro to the thickness you need to be stiff enough, it will end up being heavier than MDF. If you have a lot of money and want light and strong, http://www.uscomposites.com. Get carbon fiber cloth and epoxy resin and build a custom enclosure. If that is too much money, and you would be looking at likely $300+ for an enclosure, then look at Baltic Birch plywood. It has the nice properties of MDF and weighs less. It is more expensive, though, but not by much.

 

[swimfreak26 10+ year member]

From what I've read about it, it's just expensive fiberglass in a sense. The main difference arises in that you use epoxy resin rather than polyester, and carbon fiber mat instead of mat made from glass strands....so my guess would be, no more difficult than fiberglass. Never done anything with it though so I can't say with certainty.

 

[ramos 5,000+ posts]

Carbon fiber is different from glass in a couple different ways. But the big thing is this. When your buidling something with regular old cloth/ mat and resin. You take all kinds of care to remove air bubbles and such. And make it as smooth as possible to save sanding time. It will be painted, carpeted, or vinyl applied after some body filler to smooth it over. With carbon fiber 99.99999999 % of the time your using carbon fiber for the look. So you have to be absolutely perfect when laying the carbon cloth. Because every little mistake will show through your clear casting resin used to seal the CF. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[dakar8 10+ year member]

Also if you aren't used to using epoxy resin carbon fiber can be an issue. You almost have to use epoxy resin rather than polyester resin while working w/ carbon fiber. The polimerization of polyester resin is linear while epoxy cross hatches and thereby combines in a 3 dimensional fashion. Epoxy is harder to work with because of the shortened length of worktime and more elbow grease will need to be used if the finish has issues. If you are confident in your fiberglassing skills then go for it. Just make sure to work fast or you're SOL //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif