Automotive Enclosure

Carbon Fiber part for Renovo Motors

The summer following my sophmore year of undergrad I interned at Renovo Motors, a high performance electric vehicle startup. My main role was to design and manufacture a carbon fiber enclosure from scratch and because there was no infastructure in place to do this the process was quite a journey. In order to make the part I brought a CNC router online, machined the plug out of medium density fiberboard, sealed the plug with primer, sanded it to a mirror finish, sprayed tooling gelcoat on the plug, secured a CNC routed frame to the getcoat with fiberglass, popped the plug out, and finally manufactured the carbon part using the resin infusion technique. The process was extremely involved but was one of the most rewarding projects I've had the opportunity to work on. Completed Summer of 2012.





The finished part sitting next to the beautiful mold

Routing a prototype plug out of pink foam

The MDF plug with the first coat of primer sprayed on it and sanded down

A few more coats of primer on the plug with some filler on the low spots





The finished plug brought to a mirror finish

Coating the plug with Frekote mold release

Tooling gelcoat applied

The mold support frame attached to the tooling gelcoat with fiberglass

I got a perfect mold on the first try!





Laying the dry carbon layers in

Laying the breather fabric and vacuum line

We have suction! Resin input line in the middle of the mold and the vacuum line on the left

Carbon fiber parts right out of the mold

Done!
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