Carbon fibre is the material of tomorrow for specialist design-engineering components. Unsurpassed in its combination of high strength and low weight, carbon fibre requires expert skills and proven expertise to turn design ideas into usable, reliable, quality assured components.
Education: 9 times out of 10, a company new to composites will ask DPS to make their component in "carbon." While usually resulting in a lighter, stronger, and stiffer component - building a non-composite component in carbon usually results in a higher unit cost. The reason for this is simple - the original component was not designed with modern composite techniques in mind!
Myth: All carbon fibre components are too expensive. This is something DPS struggles with when it comes to educating "non motor racing/aerospace" companies. If you take a fresh look at designing components with composites, and take advantage of carbon fibre's unique properties, you can often produce a component with a similar cost to using normal manufacturing techniques and materials. For example: to give it "section" for stiffness, a steel pressing may have many folds and bends; but a simple flat laminate - core - laminate could be lighter and stiffer - without the need for a complex shape.
Carbonfibre is one of the strongest fibres known to man. It is usually the first choice of fibre if something very strong and very light is required. Racing car monocoques and aero plane wings are usually constructed of carbon. The resin that makes it rigid is usually Epoxy resin. Very strong resins are stiff and similar in consistency to toffee, quite a challenge to push through fibre matt with a brush!! Pre impregnation is the technique used to get this very strong resin into the fibres.
The resin is heated between two steel rollers and then forced into the fabric between the rollers, controlling both the thickness and the weight of resin pushed into the fabric. This tightly controlled fibre to resin ratio is what achieves the optimum strength to weight ratio. The downside of this material is that due to the very high pressures and temperatures used to cure it effectively, its surface finish reflects the surface of the PTFE film on which its molded.