How to knit a sports car with carbon fibre | Hacker News Reader

How to knit a sports car with carbon fibre

economist.com

44 pointsbookofjoe12 comments

Braid, not knit. The first sentence gets it right:

Bertha (pictured above) is an automated braiding machine.

But the title and later in the article, the author uses "knit", which is an entirely different structure with different manufacturing approaches and engineering properties.

Sadly, one of the most spectacular videos of a high-end modern carbon fibre braiding machine I've ever seen ... was an incorrectly posted internal video (iirc, from Toyota), and was taken down. The big modern machines like the ones cited here inherit from, but significantly evolve, braiding machines as developed early in the Industrial Revolution. Better tension control, braid formation management, and the ability to perfectly handle ribbon-like materials are among the improvements.

Fiber layup machines are really cool [1]. Hard to tell from the picture but I'm assuming they machine is one of the circular fiber layup machines rather then the newer multi-axis ones. Carbon Fiber layup is a huge market that's still relatively untouched. There are many companies racing to be the winner but not have prevailed so far. If you can manage to make one that affordable for industrial usage, you will be able to make a lot of money.

Found an "old" video demonstrating the technology that is mentioned in the article [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4gMDduHgA [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j19na8LMBnE

This was the video I remembered too: the machine was built for the Lexus LFA, which was rumoured to cost twice to build what it eventually sold for. Hopefully they managed to recoup some of their costs through technology R&D like this one.

I can imagine, that specific technology is obsoleted mainly because of the cost to get it running and if a single feeder breaks, the whole machine will be down. Most of the industry is heading towards automated fiber layup and placement like this one [1].

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZt5PrXbr6k

Guerilla Gravity recently started using a similar process to build carbon fiber mountain bike frames. It's allowed them to build frames in the US that sell for less than comparable bikes made in Asia.

https://m.pinkbike.com/news/guerilla-gravity-us-made-carbon-...

Time Sport in France have been doing this for road bikes for years (at least 10 years I think).

There's a video of them weaving forks somewhere but all I could find was this video a them weaving a tube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJcrRpa_JWE

Edit: Here you go. From 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66ffKebNPbs#action=share

How is it that this technology is so unevenly distributed?

The article doesn't touch on this but the machine's name, Bertha, is almost certainly a reference to the 80s UK TV show about a factory machine that could seemingly make anything. Quite apt! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_(TV_series)

Or it's just the biggest/heaviest machine in the immediate vicinity. Machines get named Bertha all the time though some play on "thicc" seems to be gaining a bit of market share as the younger generations enter the workforce.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha

This is interesting indeed. Never heard of the show, being from the U.S. Perhaps time to bring it back?

Another interesting link that may be of interest: https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/champion-racing-driver-b... The combination of sophisticated space, aeronautical and mil spec 3D printing with these modern braiding techniques are transforming high performance equipment manufacture

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