×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

How thin of a wall is manufacturable in composite tubes?

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?

A 3/4 oz fiberglass cloth(Hexcel) will give you about
 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?

Eek! Grinding a tube down to 3 thou from 5? Not an op for the faint hearted...

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?

As a practical matter the answer to your question is no. Random mats are light but thick. If you were motivated enough you could make something with glass monofilament. The problem is that composites require multiple layers.   

RE: How thin of a wall is manufacturable in composite tubes?

It is possible to get 1 mil prepreg (expensive) and do a "cigarette roll" to get a 4 mil tube using ±15 for the layup.  This is how golf shafts are made.

RE: How thin of a wall is manufacturable in composite tubes?

RP Stress,
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?

Thanks B.E.-R.
 

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources