How thin of a wall is manufacturable in composite tubes?
How thin of a wall is manufacturable in composite tubes?
(OP)
I am looking for a very thin-walled tube with about .25" ID. The thinnest stainless steel tubes I've found have .005" wall that can be ground down to about .003" at best.
Can composites be made in .002" wall? This is a non-structural application (pretty much). Filament winding?
Regards, Kurt





RE: How thin of a wall is manufacturable in composite tubes?
0.0015" per layer and yes you could filament wind with a very fine tow.
a lot will depend on your application.
B.E.
RE: How thin of a wall is manufacturable in composite tubes?
AMS-C-9084 lists glass cloth down to ~2 oz/sq.yd. That comes out between 0.003" and 0.005"/ply.
Thayer, http://thayercraft.com/ , list glass fabrics down to 0.56 oz/sq.yd. At 50% glass by volume that should come out at less than 1 thou/ply. Making a tube out of a single layer would be problematic, but two plies should be sort of doable. Depends on how uniform you want it.
Hollingsworth & Vose, http://www.hollingsworth-vose.com/ , used to have random mat veils of material like carbon down to about 5 or 6 gsm (0.175 oz/sq.yd.). If you could find a way to put a little bit of resin into that it would be rather thin, if it held together...
RE: How thin of a wall is manufacturable in composite tubes?
RE: How thin of a wall is manufacturable in composite tubes?
RE: How thin of a wall is manufacturable in composite tubes?
Mr Thayer Buys surplus and damaged Glass cloth, to make blown in glass insulation. They take the glass cloth and shred it in a hammer mill.
Every once in a while they find some "good" cloth that they will offer on the surplus market. I have purchased from him on occasion, and if you know, what you are looking for, he has bargains.
Whilst his stuff is good for boats and other stuff, I would make sure he can offer you original certs, before, you put this in an aircraft.
B.E.
RE: How thin of a wall is manufacturable in composite tubes?