CFRP Reinforced Polymer 3K Plain Carbon Fiber Tubing 500mm Length

Product Description

5x 200mm Lengths Carbon Fibre Tubes Rods Strips: 2,3,4,5,6,8,10,12,15,16,20mm

Carbon Fibre Rod Tube Description:

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 aluminium, 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 may be 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

Below is a summary and brief description of the types of Carbon Fibre that we stock.

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.

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 mechanisation applications, fuselage spars in R/C boats, planes and UAV projects, sports equipment and kites.

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 mechanisation applications, fuselage spars in R/C boats, planes and UAV projects, sports equipment and kites.

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 tube 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.

Carbon Fibre Sheet

A rigid 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.

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

Specification:

Carbon Fibre Rod Tube Applications:

Carbon fibre tubes can be used for many tubular applications. Some current common uses include:

• Robotics and Automation
• Telescoping Poles
• Metrology Instrumentation
• Idler Rollers
• Drone Components
• Telescopes
• Lightweight Drums
• Industrial Machinery
• Guitar Necks
• Aerospace Applications
• Formula 1 Race Car Components