Can't believe I wasted the time reading this thread... I guess I'll waste more by posting in it

I'll quote one of my professors from my college days, "an engineer is someone who can do for a dollar what any old fool can do for two."


1) I can't believe they're not teaching engineering students to do FEA by hand anymore (I only graduated 5 years ago). I wasn't even allowed to THINK SolidWorks. One of my professors did make a consession and let us program Fortran 77 for FEA... suck. Seriously, I took the SolidWorks classes a three years ago and the newly graduated 'engineers' had no clue how to do FEA without CAD.

2) CF is fun. Depending on the resin, layup and method to set it (heat, pressure, etc), it can have virtually infinite variability in properties.

3) My aluminum w/ carbon seat stays bike was buzzy. My CF is a buttery smooth mountain-goat. That's all that mattered to me when I dropped >$3K on the new sex.