McLaren invented new carbon fiber tape to build even more complex parts

https://www.thedrive.com/news/mclaren-invented-new-carbon-fiber-tape-to-build-even-more-complex-parts

by PaulHoule • 1 year ago

140 81 1 year ago

thedrive.com

2OEH8eoCRo0• 1 year ago

The most high tech tape...in the world.

Agree2468• 1 year ago

I don't know if it can be considered "inventing" when the article itself states

it’s pioneering the use of an aerospace industry technique known as Automated Rapid Tape Carbon

jerkstate• 1 year ago

McLaren has a loooong history of applying carbon fiber in new ways that revolutionize racing - the MP4/1 was the first full carbon monocoque chassis way back in 1981. Even though carbon fiber had previously been used in a limited fashion in other automotive and aerospace applications, most people credit McLaren for really bringing carbon fiber to the automotive world, because the MP4 series of racing cars were so dominant, everyone else copied them.

McLaren is also currently leading the F1 world championship (after one race) after having won the constructor's championship last year. So whatever they are doing merits understanding.

archsurface2• 1 year ago

They didn't win last year as much Checo handed it to them.

rad_gruchalski• 1 year ago

Carbon Fibre didn’t become mainstream until Pagani Composite Research was established in 1988. The person who brought carbon fibre to the masses was Horacio Pagani through his cooperation with Lamborghini. That’s where Horacio Pagani had the money from to focus on Pagani Automobili.

moomin• 1 year ago

The article suggests there’s plenty of new tech there.

brookst4• 1 year ago

The age-old “invention versus innovation” semantic tail chasing.

Some people think applying old concepts to new areas counts as invention, some don’t. Debating the point isn’t useful because there’s no objective truth to get to.

mannykannot3• 1 year ago

I appreciate where you are coming from, but I'm not willing to say that there is no objective truth to it. Take the triode, for example, or the transistor. I include the latter because while it did something that functionally the triode could also do, it did it by exploiting different physics, and the difference was significant.

testfrequency• 1 year ago

Side note: I loved the way you worded this.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such deliberate “no point as there’s no common objective” written to describe an opposing argument of ideals

colechristensen• 1 year ago

Some people think applying old concepts to new areas counts as invention, some don’t. Debating the point isn’t useful because there’s no objective truth to get to.

This is most of philosophy :) arguing about the definitions of words especially in the edge cases. But it does matter, because how we quantify, reward, and protect "invention" matters, to do that you need an accurate definition, and boring folks to hash over what counts and what doesn't.

Around here people care a lot about patents and what should be patentable, and that really revolves around what is and isn't actual innovation, actual invention. Sometimes a thing is truly new and unique, other times it's a trivial obvious change, most of the time it's ambiguous and having precise language to determine which one and to what degree a thing is, can make all the difference.

TeMPOraL3• 1 year ago

Then there's a different tail chase that's on the opposite side of "innovation" - whether doing the obvious thing others are doing, but achieving wider reach because of more funding, counts as innovation, or just popularization?

(To me personally, it's popularization, but in startup economy, it's pretty much the definition of "innovation".)

InDubioProRubio• 1 year ago

Its all just TRIZ. https://www.triz40.com/TRIZ_GB.php

xanderlewis• 1 year ago

I disagree that in general it’s not useful to debate subjective matters.

What is being debated is not whether the given label applies, but whether the label should apply (which really means what the label means), which are subtly different things. The outcome of such a debate is an improved definition or at least an improved understanding of the sense in which others use the label.

I take it you don’t think it pointless to have an argument about whether or not something is ‘racist’, for example.

SecretDreams• 1 year ago

Sometimes it's about the journey. Arguing/debating, even when there's no objective truth to the conclusion, can still teach you a lot about yourself and your opponent. How you think, where you have gaps.

Think of any political debate during an election. There's no truth. It's more for the audience.

Let the audience know who you are!

helsinkiandrew• 1 year ago

It seems it’s the method of application they’ve invented/developed rather than the tape itself:

McLaren develops aerospace-inspired ART method for volume composite super car engineering

https://www.compositesworld.com/news/mclaren-develops-aerosp...

irjustin• 1 year ago

Yeah I agree. On the spectrum of "copying" to "inventing" I concur this is more like "scaled down version" of the aerospace. Maybe "draws heavily".

blitzar• 1 year ago

I invented gaffer tape yesterday when I pioneered its use in taping things together.

I guess my royalty cheques will be rolling in any day now.

mschuster91• 1 year ago

IMHO, it can because there can be significant challenges of implementing a given (manufacturing) process under completely different constraints. Like, air frames need to deal with a huge amount of weight and massive temperature swings (a flight from Qatar to Europe for example will start with +40 °C, and at travel height -60 °C), and F1 racing cars will instead encounter very frequent and very rapid acceleration/deceleration and up to 5G in dynamic forces.

turtlesdown11• 1 year ago

this is a PR piece

dan_quixote• 1 year ago

It looks exactly how the aerospace automated fiber placement robot arms operated starting 10 years ago...but with a slightly smaller table. So they revolutionized the technology by slightly reducing the working volume!

It's still very cool to see the technology propagate to other industries though.

nimish• 1 year ago

Where is mass market carbon fiber? Expensive carbon fiber parts aren't interesting.

It's not even that expensive if you consider that it's maybe 5k extra now that even a basic car can cost $40000

soared• 1 year ago

In consumer bicycles

TheSpiceIsLife3• 1 year ago

Do those still have a habit of snapping without any prior warning?

Having said that, the chrome moly top tube on my road bike broke without warning. Granted I did get hit by a cop car doing 80kph in a 50kph zone. Strained a thumb too.

fritzo• 1 year ago

Paddles for stand up paddle boards, kayaks

mayneack• 1 year ago

My hiking poles

TheSpiceIsLife3• 1 year ago

Fishing rods.

stbullard• 1 year ago

Arrow shafts: $5-10 for a ~30”-long, high-precision high-modulus carbon tube.

thot_experiment2• 1 year ago

All sorts of hobby aerospace stuff defaults to CF these days, with tubes, bar and sheet stock being so readily available.

flenserboy• 1 year ago

baseball bats

gnabgib• 1 year ago

Headphone cups, laptop, bicycle wheels, bicycle seat, water bottle holder, mechanical pencil, tent poles, sunglasses case.

bix6• 1 year ago

Shoes

mtanski• 1 year ago

Pre tariffs you could get a whole Carbon bike frame from CN (including stem, handlebar, fork) for $500.

And while I'll give that there was variety between vendors, some of them were doing sophisticated layups with multiple grades of wave that withstood a torture tests far beyond the ANSI bike tests.

In fact you could argue they were overbuilt compared to Western brands (at a cost of 100 - 150g) since they didn't want to deal with warranty claims.

Truly amazing, cheap, good quality mass market carbon products.

TeMPOraL3• 1 year ago

In fact you could argue they were overbuilt compared to Western brands (at a cost of 100 - 150g) since they didn't want to deal with warranty claims.

That's the single strongest advertising for a product I've seen in a while.

As a customer, I also don't want to deal with warranty claims. Overbuilt = as it should be. Excessive optimization ("value engineering") = bad, waste of resources, and producer of trash.

(Excessive optimization also limits what you can do with a product, and is potentially unsafe, as normal use could exceed structural or operational limits of the product, breaking it, and potentially hurting the user.)

(Okay, I feel like I'm gearing for a long rant about sorry state of physical goods on the market, so I'll just stop now.)

bahmboo• 1 year ago

BMW i3. Dated a bit but it's impressive. There's tons of CF stuff out there.

LeonM• 1 year ago

Not just the i3, BMW also produced the 'carbon core' 7-series, which I think was a very interesting development as well.

The 'carbon core' chassis are a combination of steel, aluminium and carbon fiber parts bonded together with adhesives. It is primarily used to improve chassis stiffness, not necessarily for weight savings.

Unfortunately it wasn't well received by the public, most critics seemed to agree that it's a bit of a gimmick feature. As far as I can tell BMW is no longer using the carbon core concept anymore. It was announced at the time that the 5-series would get a carbon core chassis as well, but I don't think that ever happened. The technology also hasn't trickled down to their performance cars lineup as most had hoped.

To me it's kind of saddening that people are willing to pay top money for carbon fiber body panels and interior trim, but when applied to the chassis (where it actually matters) they become sceptical armchair engineers.

Anecdotal, but a friend of mine who worked at BMW dealership at the time told me that the i3 didn't sell as good as BMW had anticipated, but since they had already invested heavily in the tooling to produce the i3 carbon chassis parts they needed to look for other applications. Apparently this is what led to the carbon core chassis concept for the then upcoming G11 7-series.

trhway• 1 year ago

now that even a basic car can cost $40000

where does it come from? Equinox EV is $35K MSRP and with $7.5K tax credit you get under $30K. Of course if $5K extra is not that expensive for you then i guess your "basic car" is a bit less basic than one may think :)

mailund• 1 year ago

Most sports equipment where weight is a factor and there's no regulation preventing the use of carbon fiber has some carbon fiber alternatives! There's usually cheaper alternatives made of other materials, but the carbon fiber alternatives aren't particularly expensive.

I remember buying a carbon fiber squash racquet back in college when money was tight without breaking the bank (although I did break the racquet when accidentally hitting the backwall instead of the ball once though)

jodleif• 1 year ago

Even (running)shoes come with carbon fibre inlays

PaulHoule• 1 year ago

I've got a carbon fiber tripod for photography. I also had a Dell laptop with carbon fiber parts.

kazinator• 1 year ago

Interesting naysayer comment by user Jordan Capps below story.

acyou• 1 year ago

Very impressive, that machine is a nice example of web handling equipment. A fascinating discussion of web handling is found in Exact Constraint: Machine Design Using Kinematic Principles by Douglas Blanding. These tapes seem relatively stiff and narrow.

I was under the impression that work with carbon fiber should be in a purpose-built facility, enclosed, negative pressure with dedicated, purpose built air handling and filtration equipment. You would want to compartmentalize and contain any potential dusts and fibers.

Not sure if this process doesn't generate such fibers, or if there are other engineering controls present? From the picture and video, there don't appear to be much in the way of controls at all. Depending on the dusts generated, I think I would fully enclose this machine.

Is it just that there's no shearing of the fibers? Or have they have worked with so many composites for so long that they no longer care?

zardo• 1 year ago

The point of doing it this way is to have complete control over where every fiber goes, if everything is working correctly you have zero stray fibers.

spudnik• 1 year ago

Robotized packing tape dispenser. Maybe this way duct tape can albo become a proper build material?

trklausss• 1 year ago

Cool that they were able to bring this to industry! Several years ago I was at TU Braunschweig, where they were investigating on how to do this. In particular, on the laying tape's head, solutions on how to harden the epoxy as the material was laid down: directed energy with lasers? other infrared solutions?

I don't know how this one implements it, but I'd be curious to know :)

t1234s• 1 year ago

Was there any truth to the rumor that Apple was going to acquire McLaren Automotive?

McLaren invented new carbon fiber tape to build even more complex parts

Related Stories