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Captain Ahab Jr Captain Ahab Jr is online now
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: England, Slovenia and USA
Posts: 3,613
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I've worked with carbon fibre using advanced composite materials and processing for over 20yrs (reading this makes me feel old).

There has been some cross over from racing cars to production road cars but its still very limited with the number of parts used and where. One volume manufactured part is the carbon roof panel used on the BMW M3.

Today most of the hyper road cars still use hand laminated materials and pressure cured manufacturing methods. Basically the same as used 20yrs ago on the first carbon fibre production road car, the McLaren F1. This was made using F1 racing materials and techniques with some productionisation but every stage was done by hand without any automation.

McLaren probably still lead the way on volume and manufacturing speed for production road cars. They developed their manufacturing techniques with a composite company in Austria. This company will also manufacture the 918 chassis for Porsche.

To reduce costs and speed up manufacture I think the future will be in the form of 3-D woven pre-forms placed in a self heating press with quick cure thermosetting injected resin. Part finishing will be done be CNC machining, water jet cutting and then bonding will be done by robots.

Or for really simple parts precured thermoplastic panels stamped and cut in the same way steel panels are done.
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Old 02-28-2013, 05:09 PM
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