Carbon fiber molds are used because they’re lightweight, strong, and stable under heat. They offer excellent dimensional accuracy, resist warping and corrosion, and can produce high-quality surface finishes. These molds heat up and cool down quickly, which helps improve production efficiency.

They’re ideal for composite manufacturing—especially for aerospace, automotive, and marine parts—where high performance and precise shapes are important.

Prepreg carbon fiber is ideal for making carbon parts because it already has the exact amount of resin evenly distributed, ensuring consistent strength, stiffness, and low weight. It allows for clean, precise layups and produces smooth, high-quality finishes. When cured under heat and pressure, it delivers superior performance and dimensional accuracy, making it the top choice for high-performance applications like aerospace, automotive, and racing.

We CNC our molds in-house and also finish parts with our CNC for specific applications. In some cases we use external partners to CNC our molds when they become to large or have undercuts in the designs.

Absolutely! Carbon fiber will make your parts much lighter while keeping them strong. It’s about five times lighter than steel and roughly half the weight of aluminum, yet it offers exceptional strength and stiffness. This high strength-to-weight ratio means you can achieve the same performance as metal parts with far less mass, improving efficiency, speed, and handling. That’s why carbon fiber is widely used in aerospace, automotive, and racing applications where reducing weight without sacrificing strength is essential.

Carbon fiber is stronger than steel in tension (pulling forces) and has a much higher strength-to-weight ratio, meaning it can handle great loads while being far lighter. However, it behaves differently: it’s very stiff but brittle, so it doesn’t bend or deform before breaking like steel does. It also performs best when loads are applied along the direction of the fibers and not as well under impact, shear, or compression if not properly designed. But CACF can design for these very properties!

Carbon fiber is used instead of fiberglass when higher performance is needed. It’s much stronger, stiffer, and lighter, giving parts superior strength-to-weight ratios. Carbon fiber also has better dimensional stability, less thermal expansion, and can handle higher temperatures, which makes it ideal for aerospace, automotive, and racing applications. It produces parts that are both lighter and more rigid, with a premium appearance and high-quality finish.

Carbon fiber is electrically conductive, which means it can block or interfere with radio signals like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. Because of this, it’s not ideal for embedding electronics that rely on radio frequencies, as the material can act like a Faraday cage. To avoid signal issues, designers often use fiberglass instead, since it’s non-conductive and allows radio waves to pass through freely.

On its own, carbon fiber is not fully UV resistant. The carbon fibers themselves are stable under UV light, but the resin that holds them together (usually epoxy) can degrade or yellow over time when exposed to sunlight. This can lead to surface fading, chalking, or even slight weakening of the composite.

We always use UV stable outer fibers to prevent the fading or yellowing of parts that are exposed to light.

Carbon fiber parts can be made very thin, depending on the design and strength requirements.

Each layer of carbon fiber fabric, called a ply, is typically about 0.25–0.35 mm (0.010–0.014 inches) thick once cured with resin. In theory, you could make a part with just one ply, but most functional parts use multiple layers to achieve the needed stiffness and durability.

We barely ever go thinner that 1.6mm thick here at CACF.