How to make Braided Carbon fiber tubing ?

[jiawa16832]

Hi all Guys :

Currently in the Carbon Fiber Composites Market , There is a type of tubing named Braided Carbon Fiber tubing , You can feel the Fibre when touch the tubing , It is quite different from our traditional tubing that is smoothly finished outside , And Braided 's Strength is quite tough .

It is made of Unidirectional Fabrics , Very light weighted .

Do you guys know how this tubing is made ??? From my experience it is not made by Pultrusion .

Thanks for any answers


Lei

http://www.leicomposites.com

Carbon Fiber & Fiberglass

 

[berkshire]

You need a mandril , carbon fiber braided sleeving and a resin of your choice.

Here is a link to a supplier of sleeving:

http://www.solarcomposites.com/composites/carbon fiber sleeves.html

B.E.

The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor

 

[RPstress]

The picture you posted does look like a biaxial braid like the Soller products that berkshire recommends. The reason for the rough outside is just that the smooth tooled surface is an internal mandrel as berkshire says, with a bag on the outside. This implies a VARTM infusion process. Braids all (to my knowledge) have to be infused because braiding something has to be done by weaving the fibres into a tube on a braiding machine. I guess you could prepreg the dry braid and make a prepreg tube, but I don't know of anyone who does that.

The braided tubes shown in your picture are not the type of 'uniaxial' braid mentioned by Soller, where the carbon is the longtudinal fibre part of a triaxial braid, with the biaxial part being light fibres just to hold the longitudinal ones in place (Soller mention spandex being used as the biaxial part).

Braids are used as part of the GE turbofan blade containment cases, which probably do need to be quite tough. The through-thickness nature of some of the fibres in a thick braid probably helps to resist penetration. Other than that aspect, braids tend to be have many of the characteristics of woven material.

 

[Compositepro]

Such braided tubes can be made several ways. Rubber bladder around tube with external air pressure, vacuum bagging, or trapped rubber molding. The weave texture on the outer surface indicates that pressure was applied through a conformable material like rubber or bagging film. The inner surface, I'm sure, is smooth and flat due to being formed on a hard mandrel.

The resin could have been applied by infusion or by prepregging.

 

[jiawa16832]

Yes , Inner surface is smoothly finish ! , I know there is a U.S.Manufacturer named Draonplate that produces such tubing , But donn't know how they make this .

And Braided CF tubing is much more expensive than normal CF tubing , This material is much more tough than normal tubing as well , That 's why i want to produce it for Engineering uses .

 

[Compositepro]

In my end of the business (aerospace and high performance), braided would be considered more "normal". Pultruded is the lowest cost and okay for many applications but it has some serious weaknesses, and that does hurt the opinion that many consumers have about composites.

 

[ESPcomposites]

The parts from dragon plate (and from lei composites it would appear) have a very large tow size and a rather rough outer surface.

Does anyone know of a company that sells composite parts built with processes used by large aircraft companies (i.e. unitape prepreg cured with autoclaves - or similar)?

Brian

http://www.espcomposites.com

 

[jiawa16832]

Hi Brian :

What kind of Part you look for ? Made of Carbon Fiber ?

Would you pls show me ? As i know there are many types of Carbon Fiber Parts like hood , canopy , blade used in Aircraft industry .


lei

http://www.leicomposites.com

Carbon Fiber & Fiberglass

 

[mrsdesign]

Hi,
Eurocarbon is probably the best name for biaxial and triax braids in Europe. There is AP in the U.S. which do the braiding for GE. To accurately control internal and external faces then RTM is probably the preferred technique for moulding the parts.