Apple may turn to carbon fiber for lighter MacBook Air - Page 2

Originally Posted by JeffDM

As far as I've heard, CF + resin is not recyclable. It has to be burned or dumped.



Carbon fiber is labor intensive, the CF material is expensive, and is not yet well suited for mass production. It is better suited for lower volume high cost items, such as aircraft and exotic cars and such. There are people trying to automate the process but it's not there yet. It's a bit more of an elaborate art/craft than an industrial process.

Originally Posted by cnocbui

To make something from CF, the usual practice is to use epoxy resin to bind the fibres together. Epoxy is comprised of two components, a resin and a hardener, which in most cases are mixed in a 2:1 ratio. The resulting liquid then hardens. It gives of some odour and invisible fumes in very small quantities. These should be vented away from workers. But apart from these very slight fumes, essentially all of the two original components go to forming the final plastic, so the environmental effects are negligible.

If Apple really wants to be cutting edge in the weight saving stakes they could look at using Dyneema for large area panels where high stiffness is not required.

Dyneema is also called spectra in some markets. It has a density less than that of water yet is 15 times stronger than steel by weight. It is lighter than CF and is transparent to radio frequencies so that would be a double edged sword. It is not as stiff as CF though.

TEGRIS

"To address the need for affordable materials that are both lightweight and strong, Milliken & Company has produced a composite material branded Tegris, which it markets as an alternative to carbon fiber composite. Tegris has about 70% of the strength of carbon fiber composite, and it is only about 10% of the cost.

Auto racing has a way of driving material innovation. Carbon fiber might be fine for Formula 1 budgets, but what about racings poorer cousins? NASCAR adopted Tegris for use in its splitters. Unlike carbon fiber, it doesnt splinter when it breaks, which prevents having sharp pieces of splitter lying on the track after the typical NASCAR pile up.

Tegris is composed of polypropylene threads fused together in successive layers. The patented process starts with a polypropylene structure co-extruded as a film, which is then slit into tapes and highly drawn to create a stiff, strong core. The tape yarn is woven into a fabric, and successive fabric layers are pressed together to create a single piece using thermoforming. The outside layers fuse together, playing the same role that the epoxy or resin plays in a carbon-fiber composite, while the core provides the structural strength. Layers are stacked and pressed together at very high pressure, then cut using water jets.

According to Milliken, the composite provides two to fifteen times the impact resistance of a typical thermoplastic. While Tegris is not as light or as stiff as carbon fiber composite, it is fully recyclable, unlike carbon fiber. The material returns to standard polypro upon melting during recycling. Also, by avoiding the use of glass for stiffening, Tegris wont wear out molds the way fiberglass does.

The applications beyond motorsports currently include other less motorized vehicles like kayaks and canoes. With its strength and weather resistant properties, one could also imagine outdoor furniture formed from the material."

Originally Posted by Wonderkid

We need a machine that has a 10, 12, or even 13" screen and a full size keyboard. Where Apple totally blew it with all their recent portable releases is not catering for the credit crunch, the mobile professional and those who don't need video gaming power everywhere. All they had to do with the Air to make it perfect was get rid of the wasted space in the bezel and keyboard surround, add two more USB ports and Firewire - and they would have an OS X powered netbook without any real sacrifices.

When you're in an aircraft or train, it is the dept and width of our device that counts.

Please please Apple, make an ultralight narrow and shallow portable. And price is below £600. I am ready to buy. Until then, my Mac Mini is my Mac. Because it's affordable and compact.

Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella

Here is another option...



If Apple is looking for a way to create an strong, lightweight yet affordable NetBook, Tegris might be the answer. I could see a MacBook nano made completely out of Tegris being very lightweight and affordable.

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

What trains do you ride?

Originally Posted by Abster2core

The cost. Carbon fiber is extremely expensive.

Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella

HO Scale?

Originally Posted by BisonInTexas

That and it is not RF transparent, so say goodbye to WiFi and Bluetooth unless you have external antennae.

Originally Posted by hodgkin

CF is used extensively in the pro cycling industry, with frames and most of the structural parts of these high performance frames built out of the stuff. I think there are places on high performance cars that use CF as well. It would not be unreasonable to create the entire LCD panel rear out of CF, though that may give them a design headache figuring out how to get the aesthetics down.

Originally Posted by macFanDave

Look like an exercise in diminishing returns. A 7-8% weight drop? Is that really worth the effort?

Also, what about the environmental aspect of such a switch? I believe you can cut aluminum with environmentally friendly coolants and recycle the shavings easily. On the other hand, forming composites involves some chemical reactions and I don't know how polluting those are.

Maybe someone can fill us in.

Originally Posted by Kultist

Damn, do you people live in a parallel universe with different laws of physics or are you just trying to be funny? How can you even EXPECT to get MORE stuff crammed in LESS space AND a device that weights LESS and cost LESS? Are you even serious? Do you really think you can get USB x 2, FW, full keyboard and screen and at the same time a notebook that's lighter than one that does not have those specs and cost less? You can't get ultraportable without sacrifices. Get real please.

If you want an ultraportable notebook, you have to be prepared to give up some ports and specs and to pay for it. Miniaturization has a price you know.

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

I doubt Boeing's 777 lavish use of Carbon Fiber is keeping it from wifi.

The location of the Wifi point of contact not having it's RF signal from being shielded will be considered highly important for whatever material choices Apple determines the best choice for their business model.

Originally Posted by melgross

This is like fiberglass, it's almost impossible to recycle. But with fiberglass thay can grind it down for certain uses.

Also these carbon nanotubes used for some of the newest, most exotic stuff, which is expected to become much cheaper (it's mucho times more expensive than the stuff used for bikes and cases), is considered to be a health hazard.

Originally Posted by BisonInTexas

I didn't realize that the 777 was receiving wifi from outside the fuselage while in flight, nor is the entire fuselage made out of Carbon Fiber (actually only portions of the tail, control surfaces and engine nacelles are composed of CF, the majority of the airframe is aluminum).

My point was to the original poster that suggested making the entire laptop out of CF, which would pose problems for RF reception. Some CF would be fine, but not the whole thing.

Originally Posted by franksargent

That's why it's called FRP (Fiber Reinforced Plastic).

There is no such thing as production SWNT (Single Walled Nano Tubes).

Carbon fibers themselves have the worst compressive properties due to kink banding. That's why you don't see high modulus ropes made from carbon fibers, the carbon fibers break quite easily relative to Zylon (PBO), Kevlar/Twaron, Dyneema/Spectra, Technora, or Vectran. DuPont has yet to produce production quantities of their M5 fibers, and if so, will first be used exclusively in military applications.

Carbon fibers, or Kevlar make excellent structural panels once bonded with resin, however the specific strength and specific modulus are reduced significantly due to the resin and woven fabrics to less that a factor of two strength wise and will never be as stiff pound for pound as existing high strength metals. No existing high strength woven fibers can currently match steel with a modulus of 29,000 ksi, or aluminum with a modulus of 10,000 ksi, or titanium with a modulus of 16,000 ksi.

Some basics are in order, EI is the product of modulus and moment of inertia (bending), this produces the inherent bending stiffness of any material, similarly EA/L produces the inherent axial stiffness (or K). While high modulus fibers have high strength to weight ratios relative to metals, this is reduced significantly as noted above due to the necessary addition of resins and to woven fabrics with warp and weft fill components (the fibers no longer lie in a straight line, although unidirectional multiply laminates are always possible, say 6 plies at 60 degrees each).

For instance, structural panels use a very light weight foam core (PE, PU, PET, or PVC) bonded to high strength metals such as 7075-T6 or 6061-T6 aluminum or FRP panels. Also see the Airbus A-380 which used such a material patented as Glare (can't remember at this very moment if it's a foam core or an FRP core though).

Dyneema is a very poor material due to it's linear creep properties inherent in it's low temperature limitations (70 C max, 50 C for long lifetime). Dyneema is not 15 times stronger than high strength metals (A factor of 10 is the most I've ever seen the Dyneema literature claim), stainless steels can easily exceed ~250 ksi yield stress, aluminum ~80 ksi, and titanium ~200 ksi.

Apple has zero direct experience with FRP, the SME's would all be from other private sector industries. Anyone with half a brain can do metals, apparently Apple has at least half a brain (the Asians).

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

I know this as a Mechanical Engineer but what's the point of discussing Young's Modulus, fracture mechanics, creep, tensile strengths and more to someone who doesn't have the background to truly grasp it?

Originally Posted by BisonInTexas

That and it is not RF transparent, so say goodbye to WiFi and Bluetooth unless you have external antennae.

Originally Posted by SSA

I will agree with you that ultraportable notebooks require sacrifices, but a single USB port that is recessed so that you need an extension cable of some type to even use the USB port is an absolutely unneccesary sacrifice.

There are plenty of netbooks(<10") that have a smaller chassis that have >1 USB port. Heck, many of them still offer ethernet as well and a few like the HP mini managed to get more USB ports, ethernet, AND an expresscard/34 slot into a 9" laptop. If HP stuffed all that into a 9" how is it that Apple can't get half of that into a 13"? Weight certainly isn't a big factor. After you subtract the weight of hole in the body and add a USB connector and a little solder on the logic board how much weight does a USB port add? 2-3 grams maybe? USB connectors are only a few grams so after you subtract the weight of the hole adding USB ports shouldn't add much mass to the laptop.

There are some genuine sacrifices that need to be made in an ultraportable(smaller keyboards, lower power CPUs/GPUs, etc.), but any Apple apologist that claims that there wasn't enough space for an ethernet jack or another USB port or an Expresscard/34 slot clearly hasn't looked around much. Heck, at about the same weight, Apple could have included an optical drive, 3 USB ports, and an ethernet port like Lenovo did with the X300. Dropping the optical drive, the ethernet port, and the USB ports didn't make the MBA much lighter, but took away quite a bit of functionality in the process. For a machine without an optical drive the MBA should really be a lot lighter than it is! Not moving to a carbon fiber body like many of Apple's competitors have done with machines to cut down on weight seems like a serious oversight for a machine that is supposed to be really light. The MBA should really be closer to 2.5lbs than 3.0lbs if they really wanted to gloat about it being light.

Good industrial design follows the mantra that form follows function, but at Apple it seems that form must limit function in order to meet Steve Jobs visions(eg. Apple III, Mac Cube, Macbook Air, etc.). Jonathan Ives and his industrial design team have made some nice designs, but the MacBook Air isn't one of them.

Originally Posted by paxman

I know this is off topic and I will try my hardest not to ever bring it up again but is it possible to refrain from calling Apple a 'Cupertino based firm', or worse still- a 'Cupertino based technology firm'? I know it is hard to write good copy that's just plain lazy. It's like me calling my neighbor 'the person residing next door' because I have already called him by his name - John - in a previous sentence. The company is Apple but it can equally be referred to as 'the company', 'the firm' or even 'Job's and co', but pleeeeze - we all know where Apple HQ is and that the company is involved in electronics.

OK.... sorry...

Originally Posted by hillstones

It is pretty obvious that the Air is not selling well. Jobs himself said the MacBook is the best selling of all the portables. Pro would be next, then the Air. You don't need to work at Apple to figure that one out.

Originally Posted by allblue

Seconded. A few weeks ago the phrase "...the Cupertino Calf.-based phone maker..." annoyed me so much I stayed away for a few days!

Originally Posted by JeffDM

It's been a complaint on occasion, but I think Kasper explained it saying that just writing "Apple, Inc." got too boring.

It certainly doesn't help identification, it's not as if there is another Apple consumer electronics company in another city or state that could reasonably be confused with this Apple company.

Originally Posted by franksargent

That's why it's called FRP (Fiber Reinforced Plastic).

There is no such thing as production SWNT (Single Walled Nano Tubes).

Carbon fibers themselves have the worst compressive properties due to kink banding. That's why you don't see high modulus ropes made from carbon fibers, the carbon fibers break quite easily relative to Zylon (PBO), Kevlar/Twaron, Dyneema/Spectra, Technora, or Vectran. DuPont has yet to produce production quantities of their M5 fibers, and if so, will first be used exclusively in military applications.

Carbon fibers, or Kevlar make excellent structural panels once bonded with resin, however the specific strength and specific modulus are reduced significantly due to the resin and woven fabrics to less that a factor of two strength wise and will never be as stiff pound for pound as existing high strength metals. No existing high strength woven fibers can currently match steel with a modulus of 29,000 ksi, or aluminum with a modulus of 10,000 ksi, or titanium with a modulus of 16,000 ksi.

Some basics are in order, EI is the product of modulus and moment of inertia (bending), this produces the inherent bending stiffness of any material, similarly EA/L produces the inherent axial stiffness (or K). While high modulus fibers have high strength to weight ratios relative to metals, this is reduced significantly as noted above due to the necessary addition of resins and to woven fabrics with warp and weft fill components (the fibers no longer lie in a straight line, although unidirectional multiply laminates are always possible, say 6 plies at 60 degrees each).

For instance, structural panels use a very light weight foam core (PE, PU, PET, or PVC) bonded to high strength metals such as 7075-T6 or 6061-T6 aluminum or FRP panels. Also see the Airbus A-380 which used such a material patented as Glare (can't remember at this very moment if it's a foam core or an FRP core though).

Dyneema is a very poor material due to it's linear creep properties inherent in it's low temperature limitations (70 C max, 50 C for long lifetime). Dyneema is not 15 times stronger than high strength metals (A factor of 10 is the most I've ever seen the Dyneema literature claim), stainless steels can easily exceed ~250 ksi yield stress, aluminum ~80 ksi, and titanium ~200 ksi.

Apple has zero direct experience with FRP, the SME's would all be from other private sector industries. Anyone with half a brain can do metals, apparently Apple has at least half a brain (the Asians).

Originally Posted by Dunks

The only way I would ever consider buying a Macbook Air is if it was priced about the same as a mac mini. Which will never happen.

Originally Posted by Foo2

Not that I disagree with you, but the Air likely shares the same display as the MacBook, so Apple can benefit from volume pricing and an economy of scale (e.g., simpler quality control and an ability to divert components where they're needed most).

On a side note, 500 GB drives probably aren't offered as an option yet on the MacBook and MacBook Pro because there's currently only a sole source (Samsung), which reduces bargaining power and would wreak havoc on sales if the manufacturer couldn't meet demand.

Originally Posted by paxman

And writing "the Cupertino based Electronics company" is less boring? If Kaspar is bored Kaspar should try and have more fun by thinking up a better and/or more creative way to construct his sentences. I'm not dissing his writing generally speaking, don't get me wrong. Just that.

Originally Posted by copeland

As for the CF-stuff many points have already been taken:

The carbon fibers will account for about 95% of the cost, the resin is negligible.
Apple wouldn't use unidirectional fibers but a mesh for biaxial strength. Most probably - as they were bragging about torsional stiffness - they will have to use several layers of mesh with the fibers at an angle of 45° between two different layers.

Producing carbon fibers takes a lot of energy because you have to heat plastic fibers up to 2000°C without the presence of oxygen. Furthermore you can hardly recycle it (you can grind it and use it as a filler for less challenging purposes).

And I don't believe Apple's statment that the new unibody MB's are enviromentally greener than the old ones, as long as you just look at the body. When you want to make aluminium you are digging bauxite and then invest hugh amounts of energy to melt the whole thing and extract the aluminium. Melting aluminium for recycling costs less money, but still you have to invest hugh amounts of electricity.

Wehreas if you are using injection molded plastic, it takes a significant smaller amount of energy to produce it, and if you burn it under controlled conditions you can get a not to small amount of energy back.

But this doesn't effect the claimed gain in mechanical strength in any way.

Originally Posted by JeffDM

I thought he uses several different ways to say the same thing...

Originally Posted by franksargent

Oh, and the fact that Apple has never had the requisite ME skills in house IMHO.

Originally Posted by JeffDM

Can you provide examples as to why you think this?

Originally Posted by franksargent

Can't prove a negative, thus the IMHO.

But have you ever seen Apple explicitly advertise for an ME?

I haven't.

Originally Posted by kresh

Maranatha!