I'm an engineering student working on a team for an engineering competition. We've run into a design issue: the chassis we are building has to be lightweight (this is the key design constraint) but we have fairly limited resources in terms of machining (just a fairly basic student shop with a couple lathes and mills that are meant for cutting fairly mundane materials like aluminum and stuff). We have looked into making this thing out of carbon fiber but I have heard that it is really hard to work with. The chassis doesn't require anything really fancy, but we would need to drill into it to mount bearings and stuff to it. My questions are:
1)How easy is it to machine carbon fiber? Do we need special bits/safety measures (ie will the dust cause us to choke and die?). Also, by putting holes into it do we ruin the integrity of the piece?
2)If carbon fiber won't work, what other lightweight materials will? I have no idea what sorts of composites are out there or how easy they are to machine.
3)What means are there for putting threaded holes into carbon fiber? Obviously you can't thread a laminate material, so how would you bolt onto the stuff?
The chassis is basically just a frame that we are bolting stuff to so drilling/threading holes is the extent of the machining we would have to do. I am by no means an expert machinist in any way and would appreciate any advice I can get.