Forged Carbon Fiber...

[dhutton]

First thing I thought of when I saw it was low end fiberglass boats manufactured with chop rather than mat. So an instant no for me.

Don

[Blown353]

Originally Posted by 214Chevy

I had no idea what it was made from...the shavings, edges and throw-away pieces per say. Very ingenious marketing and charges even more for it. I can see it becoming very popular due to something new and different.

While we use quite a bit of the the “whatever was sitting around that day” chopped fiber molding compounds for some our non-critical press molded chopped fiber parts as we aren’t really concerned with the cosmetics, what’s typically being used for the cosmetic automotive parts is a homogenous carbon tow that’s been chopped up into smaller pieces so each “sliver” or "flake" of material that you see in the finished layup looks similar in appearance but with random orientations and lengths. That's a little more expensive as you're starting with fresh raw material, but the process is still less labor intensive than cutting and placing individual plies of material as you have to do in a more traditional fabric layup.

A “forged” carbon automotive part would not be cosmetically appealing if you had little pieces of 2x2 twill fabric, plain weave, harness satin weave, and unidirectional carbon all appearing in the same layup… that’s the “whatever was swept up off the floor” look, which you can also purchase as molding compound. I’ve used a lot of that material over the years for initial prototyping when figuring out shrinkage and draft angles for the mold machining because it’s less expensive.