Earlier, wrote:

So some questions are, "Is there any practical way to work graphlite
(TM) rod to bend it into a permanent curve? Does anybody make pultruded
carbon fiber ros using a thermoplastic resin? Is it possible I just
didn't heat my sample enough?

Ooh, yay, a question I can sort of partly answer, and posed by a fellow
SpamCop supporter besides!

If you want to bend one little portion in the middle of a long chunk of
the stuff, you can't just heat the area where you want the bend and
leave the rest cool. That's because you're asking the carbon fibers on
the inside of the bend to shrink, and the fibers on the outside of the
bend to stretch, and carbon don't play that.

I suspect that what you would need to do is heat the entire length to
tg and crank in the bend so as to get a permanent shear displacement
between the inner and outer fibers - and in order for that to work, the
displacement has to propagate all the way to the end of the rod. And
I'm guessing that's going to be a very touchy hit-or-miss operation
that's likely to weaken or disrupt the bonds between the fibers.

So, what to do? What I do and have done in exactly that sort of
situation is to use many smaller Graphlite elements, bent and then
bonded together, instead of one big Graphlite rod. As an example, check
out the bend in the bottom spar cap on this Graphlite-based wing spar:

http://www.hpaircraft.com/hp-24/update_21_march_04.htm

That bottom spar cap is about 1-1/2" wide and 3/8" deep, and if it was
solid Graphlite there's no way I could bend it and make it stay. But
since it's made up of many smaller elements, bending the Graphlite
strips into the mold and making them stay is pretty much painless.

As another poster suggested, Jim Marske really is the expert in using
Graphlite. He's designed lots of neat tooling for coaxing it into
position and making it stay until the part is cured.

Thanks, and best regards to all

Bob K.
http://www.hpaircraft.com/hp-24
http://www.hpaircraft.com/glidair