Custom Size Carbon Fiber Tube – Precision Cut & High Strength Composite Tubing

Product Description

Custom Size Carbon Fiber Tube – Precision Cut & High Strength Composite Tubing

For several years, LIJIN has supplied customers with custom carbon fiber tubes. Depending on the application, sizes have ranged from smaller 6 and 8 inch tubes to ones greater than 40 inches. Our current manufacturing processes allow the fabrication of custom carbon fiber tubes up to 48 inches in diameter. These small and large diameter carbon fiber tubes offer great versatility, both in material selection and layup schedule. Typical reinforcement materials include carbon fiber, fiberglass, and aramid fibers.

In addition, core materials can be added between the high-strength skins, creating a sandwich structure. Many of the materials available for flat plate sandwich cores can also be used when producing sandwich core walls for custom tubes, with the most common examples being honeycomb and thermoformable form. Each custom carbon fiber tube construction method has specific advantages: pure laminate composite tubes result in thin walls that retain the mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties of the fiber, while sandwich core walls provide a lightweight means to increase local wall stiffness.

Given the wide variety of choices available for small and large diameter carbon fiber tubes, the selection of materials and layup schedule often comes from the project requirements. A good example is telescopes, where the low thermal expansion of solid or sandwich core carbon fiber tubes provides substantial improvements over metal tubes, thus offering the astronomer more reliability with temperature change.

Another example is the fabrication of radomes, which often use solid fiberglass or foam-filled fiberglass sandwich construction. A third example is in the creation of high-quality drums, where the material and layup direction can be optimized for both resonances and acoustic damping. One final example is for pressure vessels, which require thicker walls with adequate resistance to the high hoop stresses present in these applications.

Regardless of the application, the engineers at LIJIN would be more than happy to discuss your specific application and how we may be able to help. We look forward to helping you develop a custom carbon fiber tube for your upcoming project’s needs.

Features

• Fully customizable in OD, ID, length, and weave pattern
• High strength-to-weight ratio
• Available in glossy or matte finish, twill or plain weave
• Resistant to corrosion, fatigue, and temperature extremes
• Lightweight yet extremely rigid for structural applications

The first use of carbon fiber in high performance goes back to 1960-1970. It became popular very quickly in every technical area where lightness and strength were primary requirements.

Carbon fiber originates from thermal pyrolysis in a controlled oven where a material called precursor is strongly warmed up at a temperature of about 2000° C in an inert gas atmosphere to produce graphite.

Then other heat treatments modify the final properties of the fibers, for example warming up at temperatures lower than 2000°C gives you a more strength material, whereas with higher temperatures you'll get a more expensive carbon fiber but with a higher Elastic Modulus (Young's modulus).

This is why today there are many kinds of carbon fibers that, even if they're similar, leads to products with different prices and performances.

The carbon fibers previously obtained are lately drowned in epoxy resin (called the matrix) that acts as a binder, allowing the fibers to work together and to distribute the strain uniformly to each one of them.

As you can guess this matrix has a primary role and it has been studied and improved in the last years, like the nanocomposite fillers inside of it.