Bicyle Repair Process
In this blog post, you can find a little detail on how your bike is repaired.
Introduction
You are now convinced that carbon composites are capable of being repaired, but you are still curious about the materials and process that we employ to perform the repair. We appreciate your curiosity. This post describes the ins and outs of our repair service. We will walk you through what we do, why we do it, and the materials and techniques we use to repair your bicycle. You will notice that the repair process involves technique, attention to detail, steady hands, patience, and time.
Evaluation
The first step in the repair process is the evaluation of the entire bicycle frame. The reason that we evaluate the entire frame is to ensure that there are no hidden damages present on the frame. Hidden damage is a safety risk, and we want to ensure that you will return back on your bike in complete confidence. The evaluation is performed with an acoustical-type technique. A very tiny hammer is used to tap the frame and create an distinct sound. That distinct sound is used to interpret healthy and damaged areas. This technique has been used in the aeronautics industry and is accurate, affordable, and easy to create reproducible results. As noted in our carbon bicycle repair form, we prepare a final quote at the end of the evaluation and communicate our results with you before proceeding with the repair. There will be no unexpected cost involved with the repair.
Protection
Before doing anything, we protect the bicycle before the repair. This means wrapping the entire frame in plastic to protect the bike from stray drips of epoxy and scratching. We don’t want to introduce any extra damage to the frame or make unneccary work.
Dissection
After the bike is protected the next step is to dissect the damage on the frame. Damaged carbon does us no good in the final repair, so we meticulously remove any damaged carbon fiber. We record the laminate orientation of the original layup so that we have an idea of the stress state of the laminte. This information allows us to determine how much repair material we need and how to lay the repair.
Layup
We repair your frame with two conventional laminating techniques: wet layup and infusion. Both techniques involve preparing and positioning “patches” onto your bike. They also allow us to use room-temperature cure epoxy; some require mild heating for proper cure. Fun fact, your frame is likely baked in an oven at extreme heat and pressure, in a device called an autoclave. We do not expose your frame to extreme heat and pressure because this can potentially damage the existing carbon and will definitely damage the existing paint. We simply apply pressure with vacuum bags or tape.
Finishing
The finishing process includes sanding the frame, by hand, to a smooth finish. The idea is to remove leftover epoxy from the curing process to leave a smooth carbon fiber layup. The last step in the finishing process is to coat the repaired area with a protective coating. we typically use paint, but we can also show the scars with a nice, UV resistant clear coat. Depending on the complexity of the original design, we can restore the original paint scheme for an extra charge.