Product Finishing

Clearwater Composites offers a variety of services related to product finishing to provide our customers with turnkey solutions.  This includes exterior finishing, machining, bonding and assembly. 

Exterior Finishing

Various exterior finish options are available on all carbon fiber products.  Typical options are:

1. Standard Finish - "Cello-wrap" Cello-wrap is slang for describing the textured exterior of carbon fiber tubes made using the roll wrapping process.  As shown in the photo to the right, the surface of the carbon fiber tube is slightly textured with small resin ridges, about 0.001" thick.
2. Sanded Finish Smooth exterior finish with a matte-like exterior where the tubes are the color of graphite (greyish).  This is seen in the two tubes on the left side of the picture (the three tubes on the right have cello-wrap finish)
3. Ground Finish Ground finish refers to centerless grinding the carbon fiber tubes to a precise OD tolerance.  The carbon fiber tubing has the same matte-like finish as sanded, but with an added advantage of tighter OD tolerances.
4. Clearcoat Finish The clearcoat finish is generally a glossy exterior that brings out the carbon fiber "look" of the carbon fiber tubes.  The clearcoat also provides UV resistance to sunlight exposure.  The picture to the right  shows the difference between a cello-wrap and clearcoated carbon fiber tube with the 2x2 twill carbon fabric.
5. Painted Finish A painted exterior in various colors is possible.  Although this is not a popular choice for most of our customers, it is common for carbon fiber fishing rods, golf shafts and softball bats.

Machining

Carbon fiber can be a very difficult material to machine and requires special tooling and equipment versus machining traditional materials like metal or wood.  Clearwater Composites offers turnkey machining services to our customers, whether this be a simple hole, or, more complex CNC machining with high precision tolerances.  Capabilities include:

• Cutting
• CNC Machining
• Drilling
• Centerless Grinding

We also provide our customers with general advice on how best to machine carbon fiber.

Bonding/Assembly

Bonding carbon fiber to other carbon fiber or metal components is not as straight forward as one would think.  There are many important process steps that must be done to ensure an adequate bond.  Our staff has extensive knowledge in bonding and joining carbon fiber to other components and is here to provide a turnkey solution, or, we can offer our advice and suggestions for your projects.

Contact our team of carbon fiber experts to design a solution for your specific application.