Twill Weaving 6K 12K Carbon Fiber Tubing For Automation Robotics

Customized 1K 3K 6K 12K Carbon Fiber Tubing Poles with Roll Wrapping Processing

3K Carbon Fiber Tubing Poles Description:

3K Carbon Fiber Tubing Poles are made by multiple wraps of twill and/or unidirectional carbon fabrics prepreg. Roll wrapped tubes are ideal for applications that require the highest bending stiffness and lowest weight, such as automation robotics, telescoping poles, and UAV components. The finish of the roll-wrapped tube can be glossy or matte with a 3K weave or uni-directional pattern.

These tubes are roll-wrapped pre-preg made from 100% carbon fibre. 3K Roll wrapped tubes feature multi-axial orientation of the carbon fibres which gives them more uniformly distributed strength ideally suited to more demanding 'real world' applications where load and forces are rarely in only one direction. Typical uses include mast poles, spinnakers, booms, structural racking, and many other medium to heavy-duty applications.

Specifications:

About Carbon Fibre

• Lightweight: 70% lighter than steel, 40% lighter than Aluminium.
• High stiffness-to-weight ratio: 3 times stiffer than steel and aluminum for a given weight.

Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer

CFRP or often called simply carbon fibre is an extremely strong and light fibre-reinforced polymer that contains carbon fibres.CFRP can be expensive to produce but are commonly used wherever high strength-to-weight ratio and rigidity are required, such as aerospace, automotive and civil engineering, sports goods, and an increasing number of other consumer and technical applications.

CFRP is a composite material. In this case, the composite consists of two parts: a matrix and a reinforcement. In CFRP the reinforcement is carbon fibre, which provides strength. The matrix is usually a polymer resin, such as epoxy, to bind the reinforcements together. Because CFRP consists of two distinct elements, the material properties depend on these two elements. The reinforcement will give the CFRP its strength and rigidity; measured by stress and elastic modulus respectively.

Unlike isotropic materials like steel and aluminum, CFRP has directional strength properties. The properties of CFRP depend on the layout of the carbon fibre and the proportion of the carbon fibres relative to the polymer.

Manufacture of Carbon fibre Products

The primary element of CFRP is a carbon filament made by heating rayon or polyacrylonitrile fibres or petroleum residues to appropriate temperatures. Fibres maybe 7 to 8 microns in diameter and are more than 90% carbonized. These fibres are the stiffest and strongest reinforcing fibres for polymer composites.

Carbon Fibre Cloth: From the elementary fibre, a bi-directional woven sheet can be created, i.e. a twill with a 2/2 weave. These sheets may be layered onto each other in a quasi-isotropic layup, e.g. 0, +60 or -60 degrees relative to each other. Depending on the orientation of the fibres, the carbon fibre composite can be stronger in a certain direction or equally strong in all directions. A small piece can withstand an impact of many tons and still deform minimally. The complex interwoven nature of the fibre makes it very difficult to break.

Roll Wrapping: involves the applying of resin pre-impregnated composite fibre cloth (Pre-Preg) around a mandrel. The outer diameter of the mandrel thus determines the inner diameter of the final tube. The mandrel and cloth are then spiral-wrapped with consolidation tape under tension to hold the laminate in place during the curing phase. After curing, the mandrel is extracted to leave the tube ready for machining or finishing as necessary.

Pultrusion: is a process in which dry, continuous fibres are pulled through a bath of resin and then through a die. The die serves two purposes: it forces the bundle of wet fibres to conform to the shape you want to create and, since the die is heated, it will cure the resin to set the bundle of fibres into its final shape. After the composite comes out of the die, it is allowed to post-cure while being pulled to the saw where it will be cut to stock lengths.

Carbon Fibre Products

1. 3K Roll Wrapped Carbon Fibre Tube

The tubes in this category are roll-wrapped pre-preg reinforcement. Roll wrapped tubes feature multi-axial orientation of the carbon fibres which gives them more uniformly distributed strength ideally suited to more demanding 'real world' applications where load and forces are rarely in only one direction. Typical uses include mast poles, spinnakers, booms, structural racking, and many other medium to heavy-duty applications.

We stock Carbon Fibre tubes manufactured using 3k plain weave style of Carbon Fibre Cloth Fabric. Plain weave carbon fibre fabric is the 2nd most commonly used type of carbon cloth. Instead of having the distinctive diagonal pattern of 2/2 twill, plain weave is woven over-one-under-one leaving it with a simple grid pattern appearance.

Roll-wrapped tubes feature a slight rib texture spiralling along their length where shrink-tape has been used in the manufacturing process. If needs be, this can easily be sanded and polished away.

Carbon fibre tubes are a rigid carbon fibre product. They cannot be bent or reshaped in any way.

2. Pultruded Carbon Fibre Tube

Pultrusion is the name given to the continuous process of manufacturing composite materials and generally produces sections including tube, rod, box, and angle with the unidirectional alignment of the fibres.

Because they are pultruded, the carbon fibre tubes in this section have unidirectional fibre alignment which gives them the maximum possible strength along their length but leaves them less strong in other planes meaning that particular care needs to be taken to how they are fixed to reduce crush forces and spread any load as evenly as possible.

3. Pultruded Carbon Fibre Rod

Useful in a wide range of projects, these solid carbon fibre rods are manufactured using unidirectional carbon fibres, pultruded to create perfectly straight rods of high structural performance in a range of diameters.

Carbon fibre rods are used as pull/push rods in robotics and mechanization applications, fuselage spars in R/C boats, planes and UAV projects, sports equipment and kites.

4. Pultruded Carbon Fibre Strip

Useful in a wide range of projects, these solid carbon fibre strips are manufactured using unidirectional carbon fibres, pultruded to create perfectly straight strips of high structural performance in a range of diameters.

Carbon fibre strips are used as pull/push rods in robotics and mechanization applications, fuselage spars in R/C boats, planes and UAV projects, sports equipment, and kites.

5. Carbon Fibre Sheet

Carbon fibre sheet is sheet material, reinforced either in part or in full by carbon fibre. It can be used in a wide range of applications including engineering, architecture, marine, aerospace and motorsport.

Rigid sheet is flat and cannot re-shaped or re-formed to follow any other shape.

We stock one type of carbon fibre sheet: pre-preg manufactured using 3k plain weave style of Carbon Fibre Cloth Fabric. Pre-preg carbon fibre sheet has a perfectly flat gloss finish on both sides, is very strong owing to its perfect ratio of reinforcement to matrix and pressure consolidation during curing, and is manufactured to engineering tolerances.

An alternative type of carbon fibre sheet is wet-lay (We do not stock this product). The Wet-lay sheet has a high gloss finish on one side, with an uneven surface on the reverse. It is stronger than fibreglass sheet (owing to its carbon fibre reinforcement) but not as strong as pre-preg.