How to Fabricate Carbon Fiber
In many high performance vehicles, such as spacecraft and Formula One race cars, the right production materials make the difference between success and failure, or possibly even life and death. Carbon fiber is plastic reinforced by a graphite textile. While the material is very expensive to make, it is both strong and lightweight, making it very useful in the construction of vehicles that need to travel at high speeds. Fabricating carbon fiber is an industrial process that requires careful calculations, specific equipment and controlled environments. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Acrylonitrile plastic powder
- Methyl acrylate plastic
- Industrial furnaces, both aerobic and anaerobic
- Carbon fiber spinning machine
- Gas Chambers
- Coating material such as Polyester, nylon, urethane, or epoxy
Instructions
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Mix acrylonitrile plastic powder with another type of plastic, like methyl acrylate, in the solution polymerization process to form a polyacrylonitrile plastic.
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Spin the polyacrylonitrile plastic into fibers. Accomplish this by heating the plastic and pumping it through very small jets into a chamber where the solvents evaporate and leave behind a solid fiber. This process forms the internal atomic structure of the fiber.
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Wash and stretch the fibers to the appropriate diameter using specialized equipment. Through stretching, the molecules inside the fibers align and turn into a yarn-like substance. This helps facilitate the formation of tightly-bonded carbon crystals in the carbonization process.
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Stabilize the fibers. Heat the fibers in an air environment to a temperature of roughly 390 to 590 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 to 120 minutes. During the heating process, the fibers absorb oxygen molecules and convert their linear atomic bonding structure to a more thermally stable ladder-bonding structure. It is important to perform this step in a controlled environment as the chemical reactions that occur generate their own heat, which requires careful monitoring to avoid overheating. The equipment and materials used in this process might include hot rollers, heated air in a chemical mixture, or a series of heated chambers.
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Carbonize the fibers. After stabilization, heat the fibers in a furnace containing a gas mixture to a temperature of roughly 1,830 to 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit. It is important that no oxygen be present in the furnace as the anaerobic environment prevents the fibers from burning at extremely high temperatures. The fibers begin to lose their non-carbon atoms as they heat. This causes the remaining carbon atoms to form into tightly-bonded carbon crystals.
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Surface treat the fibers. To give the fibers improved bonding properties, lightly oxidize their surfaces. By adding oxygen atoms to the surface, the fibers become rougher and gain better physical and chemical bonding attributes. Accomplish this by immersing the fibers in a liquid like nitric acid or sodium hypochlorite, or by surrounding the fibers in gases like carbon dioxide, ozone or air. Carbon fibers are especially prone to developing imperfections at this stage, so it is important the process occurs in a controlled environment.
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Coat the fibers in a process called sizing, to protect them during the winding process. Polyester, nylon, urethane and epoxy are all common coating materials.
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Wind the fibers onto cylinders. The fiber-wound cylinders, also known as bobbins, are then loaded into a spinning apparatus where the fibers can be twisted into a number of different sized yarns, later woven or molded into shapes to form the material or fabric used in a variety of products.
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Tips & Warnings
Making carbon fiber is an industrial process that should only be done by professionals in an approved facility with access to the proper equipment.
