Originally Posted by Road Fan

From your description, I agree that the tooling is significant. But I think that the technique that successful carbon-layers (is there a better term? The pattern is called "lay-up.") follow is very critical, and subjective. If strength depends on transferring shear stresses between carbon fabric plies, then what connects them together and transfers stress is the matrix, or the plastic, which must penetrate to contact all the fibers. What could go wrong with a misplaced part, a little contamination, or plastic mush that looks like all the other plastic mushes?

Anybody know if there are any mass-production carbon fiber frame factories in North America?