Hey PiLigand, cool project idea!
I'm an industrial design student and I've been building a frame as a side project this semester. I did a model of the bike in Rhino3D first so I could visualize everything and figure out my dimensions, and do renders to figure out my paint scheme and such. My frame was lugged steel though, so no molds involved. (I've attached a image of one of the renders for reference)
I don't know too much about the practicalities of building a one-off carbon frame, but I imagine you might be able to build molds out of MDF, cheap hardwood, or foam if there isn't too much pressure involved. The machining time for any softer material will be a lot less and if you keep the mold fairly simple you could probably get the molds cut on a fairly basic CNC. Looking at the procedure used by the big manufacturers looks pretty tough since you need to inflate carbon into the mold cavity. Laying up the carbon by hand over top of a foam core ala fiberglass and then vacuum bagging the parts would probably be a lot easier to do without expensive tooling.
There is a composite bike build on Sheldon Brown's website:
How I Made a Carbon Fiber/Epoxy Composite Bike in my Garage, by Damon Rinard
He used a foam core with layers of carbon and epoxy built up on top of it. He used electrical tape
to wrap the carbon/epoxy during curing! So, obviously this can be done on a budget, lol.
Also, check out
OUR KITS | HERObike they are bamboo bikes with hand wrapped carbon "lugs" that builders can do at home. Very simple and perhaps a source of techniques for home carbon layup. Also, note that they use aluminum head tubes and bottom brackets with carbon/bamboo affixes to them.
Also, check out this post on instructables!
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-...-bam/?ALLSTEPS
Quite a good process overview...it doesn't really
look any harder than building with steel (easy to say at least, haha!). You could probably have a foam core CNC'd so the dimensions are perfect. You could add complex details by hand after machining too, since foam is so easy to work.
