How thin of a wall is manufacturable in composite tubes?

[kurtsutherland]

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

 

[berkshire]

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.

 

[RPstress]

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...

 

[Compositepro]

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.

 

[Hansmeister]

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.

 

[berkshire]

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.

 

[RPstress]

Thanks B.E.-R.