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My experience with carbon fiber is mostly in cycling. One of the drawbacks with carbon fiber is its tendency to fail catastrophically. By that I don't mean th

My experience with carbon fiber is mostly in cycling. One of the drawbacks with carbon fiber is its tendency to fail catastrophically. By that I don't mean that it tends to fail per se, but when it does it often doesn't do so gradually with warning like steel or aluminum (which warps, dents, and/or cracks visibly). So there's a certain fear about hidden cracks and failure points. This gets exacerbated when talking about used items. When talking about recycling or repairing carbon fiber, then, I think you'd have to convince people that it's just as stable as the original product, and that there aren't any hidden failure points. This obviously wouldn't apply to everything carbon fiber, but for things where it's often used, like in transportation, I think you'd have to have an inexpensive, foolproof, airtight way to verify integrity.

hinkley 5y ago
Trek had an 'affordable' hybrid composite bike, the Trek 2100, that merely twice as expensive as any reasonable hobbyist would pay for a bike instead of 5x as expensive. It was carbon tubes (they had patents on making them) and aluminum lugs, but the bond wasn't always good and so they would crack, chip, or delaminate. Big recall. The one guy we knew who had one rode it until it broke and then sent it back. That was a pretty long day for him (I can't recall if he rode it back gingerly or had someone pick him up).
cycomanic 5y ago
Another fellow cyclist here. Aluminium in fact has a very similar failure mode. It also fails catastrophically without warning. This was also brought against aluminium frames when they first started coming up to replace steel. The bigger issue with carbon (in the context of cycling) is that there can be significant fabrication defects (voids) that are impossible to detect without special equipment. On aluminium frames you really only have to look and the welds to see if there are defects. Together with the fact that most (even premium brands like trek, canyon...) manufacture ultra cheap in China with very little QC (due to the race to the bottom regarding costs) , means you could get a significantly weakened frame straight from the dealer.

hinkley 5y ago

Trek had an 'affordable' hybrid composite bike, the Trek 2100, that merely twice as expensive as any reasonable hobbyist would pay for a bike instead of 5x as expensive. It was carbon tubes (they had patents on making them) and aluminum lugs, but the bond wasn't always good and so they would crack, chip, or delaminate. Big recall. The one guy we knew who had one rode it until it broke and then sent it back. That was a pretty long day for him (I can't recall if he rode it back gingerly or had someone pick him up).

cycomanic 5y ago

Another fellow cyclist here. Aluminium in fact has a very similar failure mode. It also fails catastrophically without warning. This was also brought against aluminium frames when they first started coming up to replace steel. The bigger issue with carbon (in the context of cycling) is that there can be significant fabrication defects (voids) that are impossible to detect without special equipment. On aluminium frames you really only have to look and the welds to see if there are defects. Together with the fact that most (even premium brands like trek, canyon...) manufacture ultra cheap in China with very little QC (due to the race to the bottom regarding costs) , means you could get a significantly weakened frame straight from the dealer.