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.
Here is another option...
Quote:
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 racing?s poorer cousins? NASCAR adopted Tegris for use in its splitters. Unlike carbon fiber, it doesn?t 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 won?t 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."
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.
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.
This is very likely. It is getting cheaper and cheaper. Its very strong, it handles heat very well and can be colored in any color. It is also very flexible under high temperatures, meaning that macbook can be shaped to anything they like. I can see iPhone be made out of it too. Im so not a fan of this plastic back.
Carbon fiber is expensive right now, and the price hasn't been going down for 3 or 4 years.
The demand has been so high in so many different industries that suppliers really haven't been able to keep up with demand.
For apple to start introducing CF without increasing prices, it would basically have to build its own CF factory, which I don't see happening if their on a timetable...
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.
I don't know. Impact resistence doesn't equal stiffness which is the chief problem with notebooks.
The use for this material is for body panels, which are just coverings for racecars. The impact resistence is just so they don't have to replace them all the time. The stifness is provided by the steel roll frame.
That and it is not RF transparent, so say goodbye to WiFi and Bluetooth unless you have external antennae.
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.
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.
The new Vette's have CF panels in them and everywhere they can stick.
The airlines use CF too. So I am curious to see how much weight loss an really happen with CF. Amazing stuff. It dissipates heat fast too; I have touched some bike exhaust mufflers that were made of CF and I was blown away.
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.
Aluminum takes lots of energy to go from Bauxite to the Billet that apple would probs. use for its "brick" machining process.
Don't know if you'd be able to recycle the shavings and get the same alloy rating/type for the new billet made from them. I think there are several hundred or thousand different alloys of Aluminum.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Okay Apple, you guys are crazy, but hey, that what makes Apple...Apple
Lets hope Apple will continue this way as a company who always improve it current products to make it better. Maybe at the same time they can get the MBP lighter again cause unibody MBP is slightly heavier then previous gen MBP (although the weight increase is very small)
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.
You're only reinforcing my point that the point of presence for the Wifi antenna will not be shielded in CF.
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).
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?
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?
A lot of amateur night chirping from the peanut gallery.
Oh, and the fact that Apple has never had the requisite ME skills in house IMHO.
Comments
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.
Here is another option...
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 racing?s poorer cousins? NASCAR adopted Tegris for use in its splitters. Unlike carbon fiber, it doesn?t 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 won?t 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."
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.
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.
What trains do you ride?
The demand has been so high in so many different industries that suppliers really haven't been able to keep up with demand.
For apple to start introducing CF without increasing prices, it would basically have to build its own CF factory, which I don't see happening if their on a timetable...
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.
I don't know. Impact resistence doesn't equal stiffness which is the chief problem with notebooks.
The use for this material is for body panels, which are just coverings for racecars. The impact resistence is just so they don't have to replace them all the time. The stifness is provided by the steel roll frame.
A laptop needs the panels to be stiff.
Machined aluminum and carbon fiber are stiff.
What trains do you ride?
HO Scale?
The cost. Carbon fiber is extremely expensive.
That and it is not RF transparent, so say goodbye to WiFi and Bluetooth unless you have external antennae.
HO Scale?
Think about the little people in the lockers at the train stations!
That and it is not RF transparent, so say goodbye to WiFi and Bluetooth unless you have external antennae.
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.
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.
The new Vette's have CF panels in them and everywhere they can stick.
The airlines use CF too. So I am curious to see how much weight loss an really happen with CF. Amazing stuff. It dissipates heat fast too; I have touched some bike exhaust mufflers that were made of CF and I was blown away.
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.
Aluminum takes lots of energy to go from Bauxite to the Billet that apple would probs. use for its "brick" machining process.
Don't know if you'd be able to recycle the shavings and get the same alloy rating/type for the new billet made from them. I think there are several hundred or thousand different alloys of Aluminum.
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.
Well Said.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Lets hope Apple will continue this way as a company who always improve it current products to make it better. Maybe at the same time they can get the MBP lighter again cause unibody MBP is slightly heavier then previous gen MBP (although the weight increase is very small)
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.
You're only reinforcing my point that the point of presence for the Wifi antenna will not be shielded in CF.
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).
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?
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?
A lot of amateur night chirping from the peanut gallery.
Oh, and the fact that Apple has never had the requisite ME skills in house IMHO.