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Carbon fibre makes Australian debut
- martyvis 10y agoSpace elevator, here we come!
- doodyhead 10y agoWas just about to post the same comment! I presume we have other obstacles to overcome first ;)
- shrewduser 10y agoUnfortunately I don't think carbon fibre Is even nearly strong enough.
- Nomentatus 10y agoIf you mean a moonthread through the Earth Moon L1 Lagrange point to stabilize a station there, yes, that's doable. Then you can use electromagnetic cannons to one-shot payloads of lunar materials to that point (coasting up to the gravitational saddle point and coming to rest there with precisely the right velocity.)
- oomkiller 10y agoOriginal source (that's not being hugged to death): http://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2017/Carbon-fibre-makes-Australian-debut?featured=F29EDEB1728C4A92B579C7A5DC28BAD5 http://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2017/Carbon-fibre-...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 10y agoAnd should it be hugged to death: https://web.archive.org/web/20170221071725/http://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2017/Carbon-fibre-makes-Australian-debut?featured=F29EDEB1728C4A92B579C7A5DC28BAD5 https://web.archive.org/web/20170221071725/http://www.csiro....
- unexistance 10y agopotential patent troll https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5v8joz/mass_production_of_carbon_fibre_solved_by_csiro/de0f5at/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5v8joz/mass_pro... based on https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/04/how-the-aussie-government-invented-wifi-and-sued-its-way-to-430-million/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/04/how-the-aussie-g...
- Untit1ed 10y agoCSIRO is a government-funded research body - not having factories to produce what it researches doesn't make it a patent troll.
- gonzo41 10y agoThe industry part of its name is important here. Most of its work is done in collaboration with people who do have factories
- xroche 10y agoBut having a track record of suing everybody for being the so-called "inventor" of WiFi three years after it was actually standardized, legitimately makes this body a PATENT TROLL. Whether they do fund actual research is irrelevant, as it would be irrelevant for a criminal to claim that he also donate to charity.
- RubyPinch 10y agoI'm guessing its the author's embellishment to drive clicks they didn't invent wifi, they invented modern wifi from the horse's mouth, the lawyer representing the company in the relevant case: "CSIRO did not invent the concept of wireless LAN, it just invented the best way of doing it, the best way it's used now throughout the world," In addition, it does seem they had a strong desire to make use of their patent, approaching potential partners, and creating spun-off companies, centered around making use of the technology
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- okonomiyaki3000 10y agoIs this article targeted at children? Too many adverbs for me.
- fanpuns 10y agoI think it was written for Australians
- mmjaa 10y agoYou're both getting down voted, but as an Australian I think you're both onto something here, quite interesting. Its definitely the case that Australian tech people tend to overly bloviate when it comes to national pride - this article triggered me extensively in that regard. Australians bloviate.
- angry_octet 10y agoIt is written by PR people ("Corporate Communications") not engineers. It is deliberately pitched in a non-technical and self-inflated way, presumably on the assumption that members of the public enjoy a jingoistic self-congratulatory tone. Maybe that is the only way to get that kind of press release into the press.
- spangry 10y agoYou're not far off. Although not a mandatory whole-of-government thing (and hard to stick to when discussing technical issues), the Aus Government research that I know of suggests public comms, ideally, should be pitched at a year 9 reading level. Hilariously, most drafts I see/do tend to score at the postgrad level.
- gene-h 10y agoSure, the fiber itself maybe cheap, but processing that fiber into different shapes still costs a fair amount of money. Carbon fiber layup is still a fairly labor intensive and somewhat wasteful process.
- jordanb 10y agoLayup is very expensive and labor intensive yes. And most layup methods require expensive jigs. You also have to use expensive, stiff epoxy resin if you want to have the mechanical properties of carbon fiber. Fiberglass is typically laid up in cheaper polyester resin since glass fiber are stretchier than carbon fiber.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> Fiberglass is typically laid up in cheaper polyester resin since glass fiber are stretchier than carbon fiber Would you mind expanding on that? I'm curious around the barriers to mass-produced carbon fiber.
- jordanb 10y agoCarbon fiber can be laid up in polyester resin but it doesn't make sense to not match capabilities between the resin and the reinforcement. A glass fiber/polyester panel will be no worse than a carbon fiber/polyester panel. So if you choose polyester you'd be a fool to use a reinforcement more expensive than glass fiber. So as a practical matter, the decision to use carbon fiber reinforcement implies the use of epoxy resin.
- discreteevent 10y agoYes. I thought the article was going to be about layup when it said costs would plummet. Particularly I was thinking of carbon fibre bikes. Looks like this will have no effect on their cost. To make a bike you need a special mold/jig for each part for each bike size. These cost money to make so to scale out the process is expensive (I.e. to have a lot of workers producing bikes concurrently). With metal tubing you can just make a lot if it and then cut, bend and weld it. Every worker doesn't need an expensive jig. And like you said, just laying up the fibre on a jig is time consuming and manual. Anyway, they can make extremely light aluminium bikes now with really good ride characteristics and they won't break if you drop them the wrong way!
- CaliforniaKarl 10y agoThe is interesting timing! The 2017 Formula 1 season gets underway in Melbourne on March 26[1]. Formula 1 regularly uses some of the most advanced technology[2], and they make heavy use of carbon fibre. Since this was patented, the methods etc. should now be public. So, once the licensing stuff is worked out, F1's carbon fibre suppliers can rework their The benefit to F1 is in teams being able to apply changes faster, taking lessons learned from Melbourne and applying them as quickly as possible, without having to wait as long as they do now for new parts to be constructed. I'm looking forward to this! [1]: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/headlines/2016/11/f1-fia-confirms-2017-calendar.html https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/headlines/2016/11/f1-fia-... [2]: At least, what they can get away with! Some examples from the past: http://www.redbull.com/us/en/motorsports/f1/stories/1331620648540/5-technical-f1-innovations http://www.redbull.com/us/en/motorsports/f1/stories/13316206...
- metaphor 10y ago> ...without having to wait as long as they do now for new parts to be constructed. The comment implies that the time it takes for prototype teams to respin is largely driven by the availability of raw materials...I'm simply not following the logic.
- exDM69 10y agoYes, F1 race car composite parts are still largely made by hand (assisted by laser cutters, 3d printers and other high tech). The ability to produce prototypes isn't limited by the availability of raw materials. That said, an improvement in carbon composite manufacturing could still help them if the amount of manual labor could be reduced.
- Neliquat 10y agoOn occasion, sourcing specialty materials is truly the issue in racing. When race season starts, many fluids, and composite products are sold out for months. Many are very bespoke to racing and aerospace, so lead time may be years. Using our own processes and layup is often as much about availability as function. For F1 budgets, this may be less of an issue.
- nullsandwich 10y agoCurrently, Boeing can not replace the 737 with a Carbon Fiber plane because there isn't enough Carbon Fiber produced on earth to keep up with the production line completing three aircraft a day. However, if enough Carbon Fibre could be created to logistically allow Boeing to move away from aluminum I am sure you would see a whole new level of demand for Carbon Fibre. Needless to say, the Carbon Fibre created would need to met Boeing spec, as Carbon Fibre does not have a single global quality standard, unlike aluminum (thank you WWII).
- dingo_bat 10y ago> three aircraft a day Is that the current production rate for 737s?
- animex 10y agoNot historically. While they have thousands on order, they seemed to have cranked out ~490 planes per year over the last 3 years, averaging 1.34 per day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737#Orders_and_deliveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737#Orders_and_deliveri...
- dantiberian 10y agoOver 250 working days it's just under 2/day.
- phil21 10y agoDoes the 737 production line shut down on weekends? That would somewhat surprise me.
- turbohedgehog 10y agoNearly 2 a day at Renton: http://boeing.mediaroom.com/2014-10-02-Boeing-to-Increase-737-Production-Rate-to-52-per-Month-in-2018 http://boeing.mediaroom.com/2014-10-02-Boeing-to-Increase-73...
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- daurnimator 10y agoHappy to see this come to fruition after all the recent budget cuts.
- Animats 10y agoHuh? The actual article is titled "Australia for the first time has the capacity to produce carbon fibre from scratch and at scale, thanks to CSIRO and Deakin University." This seems to be Australia getting its first carbon fiber plant, not a technical breakthrough. The carbon fiber industry had overcapacity in 2013, but demand is now up a bit.[1] The biggest producer is Toray (Japan), but there are lots of others. Wind turbine blades are starting to use carbon fiber. Automotive isn't yet a volume user, but the fiber industry is struggling to get in the door. Right now, the limits on using carbon fiber seem to come from the problems in making stuff out of it. The process described in the parent article ends with a spool of thread. As of 2014, that sold for about $20/Kg, which is cheaper than 3D printer filament. Making an auto part out of that cost $80/Kg. Some new technology was supposed to bring the manufacturing cost down.[3] But as of two years ago, the cost of the base material wasn't the limiting factor on use. [1] http://www.compositesworld.com/articles/supply-and-demand-advanced-fibers-2016 http://www.compositesworld.com/articles/supply-and-demand-ad... [2] https://blog.carbonfibergear.com https://blog.carbonfibergear.com [3] http://www.reuters.com/article/sgl-fibres-idUSL5N0MP2RP20140328 http://www.reuters.com/article/sgl-fibres-idUSL5N0MP2RP20140...
- NamTaf 10y agoI, too, can't see from the CSIRO article how costs will crash. It looks like they just discovered a wet spinning process and patented it. Maybe the OP's article theorises why this may be the case, but I can't load it. Is it just that it's no longer purely a trade secret among facilities?
- neltnerb 10y agoMaybe they mean that, in Australia, it will crash since they won't have to pay import costs anymore?
- NamTaf 10y agoYou could be right. My completely uneducated guesses would be, in order of likelihood: - an open patent rather than trade secret means that many manufactuers can make it with the comparitively lower barrier to entry of a patent licence rather than inventing a process internally - what you said - Their process is somehow revolutionary (pun not intended) and makes it cheaper to manufacture I'd be interested if anyone knows more!
- Someone 10y ago"The wet spinning line machinery takes a sticky mix of precursor chemicals and turns it into five hundred individual strands of fibre, each thinner than a human hair." Even if I am willing to believe they are actually counting the strands (could be the case, especially if they are really long), I can't believe that this machine produces exactly 500 in each batch, so I suspect something is missing after "five hundred". "500 micron long strands", "500m of strands a minute" or something like it? Also, regardless of whether a unit is missing, how does this compare to the competition?
- iamgopal 10y agoTextile industry has already done all kind of thing that can be done on a strand. So I don't think Anything innovative needed here apart from tons of carbon Fiber to do all kinds of things on.
- yetihehe 10y agoThey could have 500 nozzles which spin out precursor into strands. Each individual nozzle produces one strand and it's pretty countable.
- retSava 10y agoThe other answers. Or, it could be 500+/- x %, which might be too detailed for a press release that is likely to get wider spread than "carbon fibre tech press".
- D_Alex 10y ago1. I am pretty sure they can count the strands exactly. What happens is that material akin to a tar pitch is extruded through tiny die holes, each hole generating one strand... if there are 500 holes, then 500 strands at a time are produced. 2. Re comparison to competition: I have visited a carbon fibre production plant in France. They use a different process, and do not extrude the fibres on site. Instead they buy polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fibers - these are used in their own right to make "acrylic" cloth, but there they are the raw material. They convert that into carbon fibre with I think tens of thousands of strands at a time. So, 500 strand production line seems to be sub-commercial.
- agentgt 10y agoI grew up dinghy sailing in Maine and some of the more affluent kids would have carbon fibre parts on their dinghies. I remember going to one of the shipyards (I think Vanguard... I can't recall) and watching them make carbon fibre parts. I was rather shocked how labor intensive it is. Maybe not labor intensive is the right word but it just takes a long time to make a single pole or mast. If I recall you take long sheets of carbon fibre and wrap around a mold and wait a little bit and then cure it. You have to do this like 40 times. I am probably missing a bunch of details as I was fairly young but I do remember it takes a long time to make carbon fibre parts. So even if carbon fibre is produced at scale the molding and producing of actual parts probably has to be sped up as well?
- beachstartup 10y agoin commercial production it can be cured in an autoclave. i believe there are also thicker sheets that can be vacuum-bagged onto a surface, so you don't need to layer it.
- matthewmcg 10y agoSimilar experience, but in Florida. At least for most of the one-design classes, the total weight of the boats and the dimensions of the important parts was set by class rules to pretty narrow tolerances regardless of construction materials. Of course with better composites you got more stiffness and could also put the weight in the most advantageous position.
- brudgers 10y agoThe surprise I felt regarding carbon fiber production coming to Australia constituting news in 2017 reminded me of Gibson's law: The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed.
- jbgreer 10y agoCarbon fiber should be dirt cheap, then? https://phys.org/news/2016-03-ornl-low-cost-carbon-fiber.html https://phys.org/news/2016-03-ornl-low-cost-carbon-fiber.htm... "Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated a production method they estimate will reduce the cost of carbon fiber as much as 50 percent and the energy used in its production by more than 60 percent."