PCFormat Forum Archive

Technique: Carbon Fiber Primer
From MAKE Magazine

This project first appeared on the pages of MAKE magazine.

It seems as though nearly everything “high performance” these days boasts some amount of carbon fiber in its construction. Originally used in aerospace, carbon fiber has moved into the mainstream and can be found in luxury automobiles, mountain bikes, and sports equipment.

Some laptops and cellphones even use printed decals to simulate this lightweight material’s cutting-edge look. The good news is that you don’t need a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility to work with carbon fiber composites. In fact, you can do it at home.

This article discusses some of the basics of carbon fiber construction and explains how to create a carbon fiber iPod case. All you need are some basic woodworking tools and skills, and the right materials. And because the same process also applies to fiberglass and Kevlar composites, these skills give you multiple ways of boosting your future projects to a new level!

Understanding Carbon Fiber

Composites are created from two or more dissimilar materials that act together as one. While concrete and plywood are technically composites, the term composite in industry has come to refer to reinforcement fibers held together in a resin matrix and formed in a mold. Carbon fiber is one of several textiles used in this class of materials. When joined together through a procedure called a layup, the fiber and the resin form a material with properties that exceed those of either constituent material.

As a rule of thumb, composites offer their greatest strength in the direction the fibers run — similar to how wood is strongest along the grain. Because of this, you can “tune” a composite’s strength characteristics by controlling and combining the directions of the fibers. If you want strength over the length of a part, simply align the fibers lengthwise. Likewise, if you’re making a tube that needs torsional (twisting) strength, it’s best to arrange the fibers helically, like springs, weaving them together with opposite rotations.

The bulleted section below describes the three most common forms of manufactured fibers: woven, unidirectional, and filament. Each general type can be produced from carbon, fiberglass, aramid (Kevlar), boron, basalt, and several other materials, which are chosen according to their particular physical properties.

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