Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. It is Friday, which
Speaker 1: means it is time for a tech Stuff classic. This
Speaker 1: classic episode originally published on June second, two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 1: It is titled The History of Carbon Fiber, a truly
Speaker 1: fascinating material that has lots of incredible uses and applications,
Speaker 1: some of which I believe have been perhaps a bit
Speaker 1: over hyped over the years, but that tends to be
Speaker 1: the case with all things technology. Let's listen in carbon fiber.
Speaker 1: Fascinating stuff it is. I didn't even realize how fascinating
Speaker 1: it was until we in fact started doing this research.
Speaker 1: And because as it is so fascinating, and since we
Speaker 1: are splaying this into two episodes, we'll probably have to
Speaker 1: look at other exotic materials in another one. Well, we'll
Speaker 1: make some mention of stuff that is similar to what
Speaker 1: carbon fiber is, but we're really going to focus on
Speaker 1: carbon fiber because it's there's a lot there. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there could have probably been way more than two episodes
Speaker 1: about carbon fiber. If we had really gotten into gritty
Speaker 1: details about about different uses for it and exactly if
Speaker 1: we had gone into the history of this is the
Speaker 1: first vehicle to use. If we had done that, this
Speaker 1: would have been a three partter easily. But but if
Speaker 1: you're not fans, we didn't go into that kind of
Speaker 1: minute detail. We're going to tell you in this episode
Speaker 1: about the history of developing carbon fiber. In our second
Speaker 1: part we'll look more into how it's actually made and
Speaker 1: the process that that you have to go through in
Speaker 1: order to get a raw material to turn into carbon fiber,
Speaker 1: and some of the challenges and benefits thereof. Yes, so, first,
Speaker 1: what the heck is carbon fiber. It's a material made
Speaker 1: up of thin strands of crystalline car been doctor, Well,
Speaker 1: there you go. Episode over, Thanks guys. Yeah, but no,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna give a little more detailed than that.
Speaker 1: So the thickness of an individual strand of carbon fiber
Speaker 1: can be thinner than a human hair by by many factors.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and um, if you're wondering, yes, it is
Speaker 1: in fact structurally similar to graphine and carbon nanotubes, the
Speaker 1: difference being in the way that the sheets of carbon
Speaker 1: atoms are are packed and interlocked. Yeah, this is one
Speaker 1: of those amazing things about carbon. You know, if you
Speaker 1: put the carbon atoms in one formation, you get this
Speaker 1: very soft material that you would find in pencils, for example.
Speaker 1: You put it in a different kind of modular combination
Speaker 1: and you get diamond about as different as two substances
Speaker 1: can being. Right, So it really shows that just by
Speaker 1: changing these these orientations you can really change the properties
Speaker 1: of this one material. Well, those little strands, those strands
Speaker 1: that are thinner than a human hair, can be twisted
Speaker 1: together to make a yarn like material and then oven
Speaker 1: like cloth, which can then be laid in a mold
Speaker 1: and then coated with resin or or a plastic so
Speaker 1: that will take on a permanent shape. So, right, the
Speaker 1: coated stuff itself is frequently referred to as carbon fiber,
Speaker 1: but you may also see it more precisely referred to
Speaker 1: as carbon fiber reinforced polymer. And that's it rolls off
Speaker 1: the tongue, right, We're just going to call it carbon fiber, So, uh,
Speaker 1: forgive us for taking a shortcut, but it has a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting properties, right, So, for one thing, it's
Speaker 1: five times stronger than steel and twice as stiff as steel,
Speaker 1: but it's lighter than steel, about two thirds lighter by volume.
Speaker 1: Also about eight times stronger than aluminum or aluminium depending
Speaker 1: on where you live um, which is really handy since
Speaker 1: aluminum is lower weight by volume is offset by its
Speaker 1: lower strength, meaning that you have to use a lot
Speaker 1: more of it to get stuff done. Right, So now
Speaker 1: you've got this new material that you can use instead
Speaker 1: of that in lots of different products, and as long
Speaker 1: as it meets the needs of whatever that product is,
Speaker 1: you are getting a benefit of something that's stronger and lighter.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing stuff. So who does use this, Well,
Speaker 1: the auto industry uses a lot of carbon fiber, right,
Speaker 1: it's main mainly there to make the components of a
Speaker 1: car lighter and stronger, which obviously I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: properties of the material, so that makes sense to transfer
Speaker 1: it to the final product. So why would you want
Speaker 1: a lighter vehicle? The main reason is cause it takes
Speaker 1: less power to move a lighter vehicle than a heavier vehicle,
Speaker 1: So that means that you can make a more efficient engine.
Speaker 1: You're using less energy to move the actual vehicle. And
Speaker 1: as long as that vehicle has maintained its strength, so
Speaker 1: you haven't compromised the safety of the people who are
Speaker 1: in the vehicle. That's a good thing. Sure, carbon fiber
Speaker 1: usually makes the car actually more resistant to impact than
Speaker 1: it would be with just regular steel components. And in
Speaker 1: terms of that efficiency, um, according to the oak Ridge
Speaker 1: National Laboratory, which is this huge lab run by the
Speaker 1: Department of Energy, you can make a car more efficient
Speaker 1: just by trading out a steel body for a carbon
Speaker 1: fiber one. So that means that you would end up
Speaker 1: over time saving lots of money and fuel costs, not
Speaker 1: to mention the environmental impact of having to consume less
Speaker 1: fuel to get around. Uh. So, these are some interesting
Speaker 1: uses of carbon fibers. Not the only one. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of others will talk about. For example, we
Speaker 1: you know Matt mentioned aerospace, a big, big industry that
Speaker 1: it relies on carbon fiber. Yeah. Yeah, um, and a
Speaker 1: lot of really mundane kind of things like golf clubs
Speaker 1: or bicycles, fishing rods, sailboat masts and wind turbines. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the thing about carbon fiber is, well, I guess
Speaker 1: we should go into the history and then I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what the thing about carbon fiber is that's foreshadowing
Speaker 1: so earliest use of carbon fibers. The interesting thing here
Speaker 1: is that the earliest use I could find predates their
Speaker 1: application in any of the industries we just mentioned. And
Speaker 1: in fact, it wasn't even used to build something like
Speaker 1: a structure. It wasn't used for its strength or lightness.
Speaker 1: It was used for an entirely different property that's inherent
Speaker 1: with carbon fiber, which is its resistance to heat. Thomas Edison,
Speaker 1: A different kind of light. Yeah, yeah, exactly, not light
Speaker 1: as in less heavy light as in let there be
Speaker 1: so Thomas Edison, who, of course we know beloved Internet darling,
Speaker 1: one of the favorites of the I guess I forgot
Speaker 1: to boo when when we when you said his name
Speaker 1: right right? I'm sorry, Okay, well we'll we'll put it
Speaker 1: in there for you Internet boo. Yes, Thomas Hays in
Speaker 1: the Elephant electrocutor, who did not personally do that, but
Speaker 1: still use them as filaments for early light bulbs way
Speaker 1: back in eighteen seventy nine because of that high tolerance
Speaker 1: for heat. Now they can also conduct electricity, but they
Speaker 1: have a high resistance. If you remember, resistance is what
Speaker 1: we'd call the the UH kind of opposing element that
Speaker 1: keeps electrons from flowing through a material smoothly. So if
Speaker 1: you have a high resistance and you want to try
Speaker 1: and get electric electrons from point A to point B,
Speaker 1: you're not getting as many to point B as we're
Speaker 1: leaving point A because some of those are converted into
Speaker 1: that electrons converting into heat. You're losing it through that resistance.
Speaker 1: I'm oversimplifying, but this is basically what's happening. So with
Speaker 1: light bulbs, that's exactly what you do want. You want
Speaker 1: to have something that's heating up, and as it heats up,
Speaker 1: it starts to give off photons, light particles. That's what
Speaker 1: lets us see that light. And of course, in this
Speaker 1: case we're talking about light that's in the visible spectrum,
Speaker 1: wouldn't be much used to us outside of that. So
Speaker 1: you end up using this material that has a resistance
Speaker 1: to high temperatures, because if it didn't, it would just
Speaker 1: burn up. You know, you would get light, but it
Speaker 1: would burn up, and then your light bulb would be useless.
Speaker 1: That's just a fire, and that's less used exactly. And
Speaker 1: while you would try and create a vacuum within the
Speaker 1: light bulbs, so you couldn't really burn burn, you would
Speaker 1: still end up having the material itself deteriorate really quickly
Speaker 1: and the light bulb would be broken. And so anytime
Speaker 1: you know when you have an old incandescent light bulb
Speaker 1: and you hear it will pop and then you shake
Speaker 1: it and you can hear the little chicken chinge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the filament that has given out because it has
Speaker 1: been worn away so much. So anyway, the carbon fiber
Speaker 1: tended to be a really good candidate for this filament,
Speaker 1: and that's what Thomas Sen used. So how did he
Speaker 1: create carbon fiber? Well, he carbonized something, which means that
Speaker 1: you're taking one material and you're converting it into these
Speaker 1: these carbon atoms, these crystalline structures of carbon atoms. Now,
Speaker 1: specifically what Thomas Haysen was using was cotton and bamboo,
Speaker 1: different different ones for different types of light bulbs. Experiment
Speaker 1: with a lot of different materials. Sure, but but carbonization
Speaker 1: is also how we make charcoal. We we carbonized would
Speaker 1: that is exactly right? And so if you wanted to
Speaker 1: carbonized wood, if you want to make your own charcoal,
Speaker 1: you would have a few steps. One is that you
Speaker 1: want to remove all the moisture you can from the
Speaker 1: organic material, usually through evaporation and heating. So with would
Speaker 1: we call it seasoning. And you may remember that just
Speaker 1: in our recent podcast about the HMS victory, they would
Speaker 1: season would in order to get as much moisture out
Speaker 1: of it as possible and made the wood stronger as
Speaker 1: a result. In this case, it's not to make the
Speaker 1: wood stronger, it's really just to get rid of all
Speaker 1: that moisture. And the next you would increase the temperature
Speaker 1: to induce pyrolysisis it's a basic chemical change brought upon
Speaker 1: a material through the application of heat. Okay, And what's
Speaker 1: important in this chemical change is that you don't allow
Speaker 1: any oxygen to come into contact with the material during
Speaker 1: the process so that it can't burn. Right because, as
Speaker 1: we remember, the three things you need are you need
Speaker 1: you need fuel, you need oxygen, and you need heat
Speaker 1: to create fire. So if you take any of those
Speaker 1: three away, you don't have fire. So by taking the
Speaker 1: oxygen away, you don't have to worry about prematurely burning
Speaker 1: your material and you can convert it to carbon without
Speaker 1: it actually catching fire. Very important in any application, specifically
Speaker 1: for charcoal, because you don't want to burn it before
Speaker 1: you burn it right, Otherwise barbecues over before it began
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, I've been in some states that some
Speaker 1: pre sad barbecue with organic material. That means getting all
Speaker 1: this stuff carbon converted down to carbon, while the other
Speaker 1: stuff like water vapor essentially just kind of evaporates away
Speaker 1: or kind of vibrates away. Technically, the atoms that are
Speaker 1: other than carbon in the material are expelled during the processing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can kind of think like carbon, they're allowed to
Speaker 1: stay at the party. Everyone else is encouraged by the
Speaker 1: bouncer to leave. So uh happen to those parties. And
Speaker 1: a lot of chemical processes go on through pyrolysis. There's
Speaker 1: one called isomerization. That's when a molecule gets rearranged into
Speaker 1: another molecule that has the same constituent atoms but a
Speaker 1: different physical structure. You know, like I was mentioning earlier,
Speaker 1: the you know, the way you construct carbon atoms together
Speaker 1: can depend that that determines what properties that material has pencil,
Speaker 1: lead or diamonds. Same thing with any other kind of molecule.
Speaker 1: You just well, not any but different molecules. You rearrange
Speaker 1: the structure of the molecule. You end up with stuff
Speaker 1: that has very different properties from each other, which is
Speaker 1: another fascinating thing. You say, all the basic ingredients are
Speaker 1: the same, but just by the way you arrange the
Speaker 1: atoms within that molecular structure, you change the actual properties
Speaker 1: of the overall substance. This is what I think is
Speaker 1: awesome about science. I don't fully understand it because I'm
Speaker 1: not a chemist, but I really find it fascinating anyway.
Speaker 1: Another thing that you would have going on through pyrolysis
Speaker 1: is called transfer hydrogen hydrogenation. This is where you can
Speaker 1: tell I'm not a chemist because I can't say any
Speaker 1: of the words. But this is the addition of hydrogen,
Speaker 1: as one would imagine to a molecule from a source
Speaker 1: other than from hydrogen gas, which is not the easiest
Speaker 1: thing to get hold of because again, hydro gen is
Speaker 1: usually uh captured in some other kind of molecular bonds.
Speaker 1: It gets pretty buddy buddy with most other things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um it's it's just a gregarious kind of atom.
Speaker 1: It likes to hang out with Budli's. So what you're
Speaker 1: left with is carbonized material. So in the case of
Speaker 1: cotton or bamboo, it's very fibrous in nature, so then
Speaker 1: you have carbon fibers. Again not meant to know. We've
Speaker 1: together to make some sort of material that's stronger and
Speaker 1: lighter than steel but still had very good use. So
Speaker 1: these were the fibers that would conduct electricity. They had
Speaker 1: the high resistance. You lose some of that energy as heat,
Speaker 1: but that's exactly what you want, so you're not not
Speaker 1: losing it so much as converting it over to heat
Speaker 1: to create light. Um This is actually called incandescence, where
Speaker 1: you heat up a material enough so that it starts
Speaker 1: to give off light, hence the name incandescent light bulbs.
Speaker 1: And you've probably seen this in multiple applications, not just
Speaker 1: incandescent bulbs. I assume most of our our listeners have
Speaker 1: seen an incandescent bulb, even though they are becoming more
Speaker 1: and more rare. But in any material that has heated
Speaker 1: up beyond it's that limit you start to see it glow, unless,
Speaker 1: of course, it's flammable and it's in the presence of oxygen,
Speaker 1: in which case you saw it catch fire. So that's
Speaker 1: exactly why Thomas Hayston decided to use this and ended
Speaker 1: up being a success. It took some experiments to get
Speaker 1: it just right, and even then, um, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: over time we made great improvements to the light bulb
Speaker 1: using different types of material as filament, not just cotton
Speaker 1: or bamboo carbon fibers. But that was the very first
Speaker 1: application of carbon fibers in any kind of manufacturing process.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more of the history of carbon
Speaker 1: fiber in just a moment, but first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break and we're back. So we're still in the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century. This is eighteen eighties six, and I
Speaker 1: still can't believe it for such a space age quote
Speaker 1: unquote space age. Yeah, yeah, it's to the nineteenth century. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: granted again used for different purposes, but still it's when
Speaker 1: you hear carbon fiber that sounds to me like maybe
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies was where it got started. But no,
Speaker 1: I was completely wrong. So you have the National Carbon Company,
Speaker 1: which was the first company to make synthetic carbon, and
Speaker 1: it merged with another company called Union Carbide in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: and eventually that company became Union Carbide Corporation in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven. Now, the whole purpose of this was to
Speaker 1: make carbon fibers for things like lightbulbs, so we're still
Speaker 1: in that stage. And meanwhile, in the nineteen thirties he
Speaker 1: had engineers who began to experiment with fiber reinforced composites
Speaker 1: or FARPs, which fiber reinforced composite to f r P.
Speaker 1: Uh it technically stands for fiber reinforced polymers, but still
Speaker 1: it confuses me. Anyway. This is a composite material made
Speaker 1: out of a pattern of polymers that are reinforced by fibers.
Speaker 1: The fibers themselves are needed to enhance elasticity and strength
Speaker 1: of this plastic material. So the first record use, according
Speaker 1: to oak Ridge National Laboratory, was for a boat hole.
Speaker 1: So we've you know, you've seen fiberglass boats. I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I mean that there's a very common thing for small
Speaker 1: boats in particular, seeing fiberglass boats. That's essentially what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. So fiberglass is used in a lot of
Speaker 1: different applications today. It's not the same thing as carbon fiber,
Speaker 1: but the the process, well maybe not the process, but
Speaker 1: the overall outcome using yeah, exactly, using fibers to reinforce
Speaker 1: a structure uh is is very similar to what would
Speaker 1: end up being used as in the carbon fiber industry,
Speaker 1: especially when you have the goal of making something very
Speaker 1: strong and very light weight exactly. So by the nineties,
Speaker 1: the defense industry began to get really interested in f
Speaker 1: rps for obvious reasons. So the search was on for
Speaker 1: new types of fiber that can make stuff stronger and lighter,
Speaker 1: and a lot of work and material science was dedicated
Speaker 1: to finding out whether the theoretical strength of certain materials
Speaker 1: could translate into practical use. So what was happening was
Speaker 1: that scientists were studying various materials and they would say,
Speaker 1: all right, based upon the molecular structure of this material,
Speaker 1: in theory, it has x amount of strength compared to
Speaker 1: some other material, and why amount of weight by volume
Speaker 1: compared to some other material if we were able to
Speaker 1: to manufacture it properly, and so the difference between theory
Speaker 1: and reality often there's a gap there because we just
Speaker 1: don't have the perfect way to manufacture the stuff that
Speaker 1: is theoretically possible, or to manufacture it in a way
Speaker 1: that is uh less than completely expensive. Yeah, this, especially
Speaker 1: early on, that is a huge challenge because you often
Speaker 1: have to invent new ways to create material so that
Speaker 1: means that you have to spend a lot of money
Speaker 1: in research and development and and to build specialty equipment
Speaker 1: to make that stuff. It's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: carbon fiber is not as plentiful as it could be.
Speaker 1: But we'll talk about that more later. Yeah, So, back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties, there were three really big drivers
Speaker 1: in the United States that pushed the development of these
Speaker 1: carbon fibers forward. That's true. So you had the industrial
Speaker 1: demand for lightweight, strong material, which included industries like aerospace, electronics,
Speaker 1: sports equipment, that kind of thing. Then there was the
Speaker 1: work in solid state materials that predicted high potential crystal
Speaker 1: strengths are certain types of material. This is what I
Speaker 1: was talking about just a second ago, where people were
Speaker 1: doing this kind of theoretical works saying, hey, if we
Speaker 1: just rearranged stuff this way in theory, it should be
Speaker 1: even stronger and lighter. Let's just find a way of
Speaker 1: making that happen. The math worked out and the physical
Speaker 1: process would follow. That's exactly right. And then the third
Speaker 1: one was that and this is probably the most important driver.
Speaker 1: During the nineteen fifties, the U s economy was going
Speaker 1: like gangbusters, y'all, so with that kind of bounty, there
Speaker 1: was doing so well that there was the ability to
Speaker 1: afford in investing in research and development and pushing these
Speaker 1: kind of technologies forward. Even if they had an initial
Speaker 1: high price to get into it, we could afford to
Speaker 1: do it. So that was a big driver. Actually. So
Speaker 1: we get to the years of nine to nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: that's when we had companies, primarily the Union Car Byte
Speaker 1: Corporation previously mentioned. Yep, they began to discover practical means
Speaker 1: of using carbon fibers as reinforcement. Those f rps we
Speaker 1: were talking about similar to that. It So these carbon
Speaker 1: fibers didn't come from cotton or bamboo, right they were.
Speaker 1: They were using materials like rayon or poly acrylon, nitrial
Speaker 1: or pan. Yeah we're gonna say pan because I kind
Speaker 1: of enjoy saying poly acryla night trial. I'll never be
Speaker 1: able to do it. My my mouth parts don't work
Speaker 1: that way. But no, carbon fibers from these are made
Speaker 1: from precursor fibers, which is made from you know, the
Speaker 1: ray on, our our pan. So the precursor fiber. We
Speaker 1: we use precursor as the term for stuff that you're
Speaker 1: going to convert into carbon fiber. And that at Loan
Speaker 1: like the precursor stuff had its own manufacturing processes, right
Speaker 1: you you had these are synthetic materials that we had
Speaker 1: to create first, that then we would create into carbon fibers.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a two step process in a
Speaker 1: grand overview. Yes, many smaller steps within exactly, which we
Speaker 1: will talk about in our second episode trust us for now. Yes, so,
Speaker 1: but the important thing here to remember is that it's
Speaker 1: not like you would go out to the fields and
Speaker 1: get some rayon. You have to make the rayon first
Speaker 1: and then you convert the rayon into carbon fiber. That
Speaker 1: just cracked me out because the mental image of fields
Speaker 1: of rayon was was a circle of hell. According to me,
Speaker 1: the fields of Rayon I think would be a great
Speaker 1: name for a band. Yeah, I'll get on that. But
Speaker 1: the the important thing here was that using these types
Speaker 1: of precursor fibers were what allowed them to create the
Speaker 1: different shapes that carbon fiber could come into. They were
Speaker 1: they were really well formed for that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: They were already strong and easily manipulatable. Yes, and if
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about the history of the
Speaker 1: Union car by corporation and its role in this. I
Speaker 1: recommend going to a c s dot Org. It has
Speaker 1: a lot on the history of carbon fiber development, goes
Speaker 1: into a huge amount detail. And again, if we were
Speaker 1: to go into as much detail as some of these
Speaker 1: sources do, we'd be doing like a five part series
Speaker 1: and think some of you guys might get a little
Speaker 1: antsy uh yeah. I I did want to mention in
Speaker 1: three that there was a way to make carbon fibers
Speaker 1: from petroleum pitch debut um and those are those are
Speaker 1: so many solid polymers kind of kind of like tar. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that was that's different obviously because you can actually
Speaker 1: find tar in nature. This was not something that you
Speaker 1: would have to first create the polymer and then do
Speaker 1: the carbonization on it. You could get the actual stuff
Speaker 1: and then separate out what you needed and then do
Speaker 1: the carbonization on that um. And they experimented with lots
Speaker 1: of other materials to try and manufacture carbon fibers. That
Speaker 1: included polyesters, polyfinal alcohol, and phenolic resins yep. But it
Speaker 1: turned out that pan Rayon and pitched the first three
Speaker 1: they really concentrate on, we're the most useful for creating
Speaker 1: high strength material so so it turned out their their
Speaker 1: initial impulse was exactly what made the most sense. It
Speaker 1: also made the most sense from a dollar standpoint, like
Speaker 1: the the having the manufacturing industries that are already established
Speaker 1: for at least rayon and pan meant that it was
Speaker 1: less expensive than to create something out of whole cloth,
Speaker 1: and petroleum pitch could be a byproduct of the petroleum industries.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of a that's kind of a gimme, Right,
Speaker 1: it's time for another quick break, but we'll be back
Speaker 1: with more history of carbon fiber. So getting back to
Speaker 1: those drivers we were talking about, the two industries that
Speaker 1: drove the carbon fiber development the most in those early
Speaker 1: years were the aerospace industry and the defense industry. So
Speaker 1: you had some outside crises like the oil crisis that
Speaker 1: affected the pace of development. And now we've got a
Speaker 1: lot of different industries that have a vested interest in
Speaker 1: creating lightweight, resilient materials for products, and carbon fibers receive
Speaker 1: a lot of attention as a result. You can imagine
Speaker 1: aerospace being the big one because we all know the
Speaker 1: heavier stuff is, the more expensive it is to try
Speaker 1: and get it out into space. The more fuel you
Speaker 1: need to get it to escape Earth's gravity so we
Speaker 1: can get into orbit. So especially these days, every dollar counts,
Speaker 1: so and obviously you want it to be really strong
Speaker 1: material because of Yeah, because because space, as we have
Speaker 1: established numerous times, is trying to kill you. So you
Speaker 1: want to make sure that you have a nice, strong
Speaker 1: barrier between you and space and and the deadly, deadly space.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, obviously a big important driver. And of
Speaker 1: course we're getting right into that era to where the
Speaker 1: United States and the Soviet Union both were racing against
Speaker 1: each other to try and get people into orbit and
Speaker 1: to get people to and from the Moon. So it
Speaker 1: was there were a lot of incentives to develop this
Speaker 1: kind of material. Now, there's some problems with carbon fiber.
Speaker 1: They have nothing really to do with the properties of
Speaker 1: the material real itself. And one of the big problems
Speaker 1: is that there are only a few companies that actually
Speaker 1: produce carbon fiber material. So the price of carbon fiber
Speaker 1: is still relatively high, which limits its use in consumer
Speaker 1: goods or just drives the prices of those goods way
Speaker 1: up as a result. So yeah, only the the more
Speaker 1: affluent can afford those type of those type of products
Speaker 1: that incorporate carbon fiber. Yeah, the last time I checked,
Speaker 1: I think cars that incorporate a lot of carbon fiber
Speaker 1: in their bodies are still running around the hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollar starting price range. Yeah. I mean they tend to
Speaker 1: be really high performance vehicles anyway, because if you're gonna
Speaker 1: go with that, you might as well go all the way.
Speaker 1: It's not just a civic engine tossingiber. But still, your
Speaker 1: your point is is very very valid. It's according to
Speaker 1: oak Ridge, there are three Japanese companies that make carbon fiber,
Speaker 1: four that are in the United States and European countries,
Speaker 1: and then one Taiwanese company and that's it that produce
Speaker 1: carbon fiber at least on the industrial scale. So when
Speaker 1: you have a limited supply, you know, each of those
Speaker 1: each of those companies has a limited amount that they
Speaker 1: can produce just based upon their their facilities, right, So
Speaker 1: if you need more than what can be made, you're
Speaker 1: kind of stuck. You know. Anyone who wants to make
Speaker 1: anything using carbon fiber is kind of limited in where
Speaker 1: they can get that raw material. Oh sure. And part
Speaker 1: of the reason that so few companies produce it is
Speaker 1: that there are huge challenges in in actually producing this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so one of them is that you first have to
Speaker 1: get the precursor fibers. That's that's step one, right, You
Speaker 1: have to have to create these precursors in order to
Speaker 1: to turnam into carbon fibers. So either you either you're
Speaker 1: buying it from some other company that manufactures it, or
Speaker 1: you're making your own. But if you make your own,
Speaker 1: that means you need two sets of manufacturing plants. Usually
Speaker 1: you need one that's dedicated just to creating the precursors
Speaker 1: and one that's decayed to carbonization. Now, some companies, like
Speaker 1: the Japanese ones, have been co locating facilities so that
Speaker 1: you have no real distance between the precursor facility and
Speaker 1: the carbonization facility at least a little bit of money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, not everyone has that luxury of being
Speaker 1: able to build, you know, twice the facilities to make
Speaker 1: one product. That also is another reason why the why
Speaker 1: we have the expense. It's not just that, uh, there's
Speaker 1: so relatively little of it to go around, but also
Speaker 1: that it does take this very involved process to actually
Speaker 1: make the stuff. So um. Other companies have actually bought
Speaker 1: up old textile plants and used them to produce the
Speaker 1: precursor fibers. Yeah, I'm wondering. Uh. Actually my my, uh
Speaker 1: my grandfather on my father's side worked in such a
Speaker 1: textile plant, which I believe is being converted over into
Speaker 1: something like that. So that's kind of interesting. One of
Speaker 1: my grandparents was also in textiles. So now I now
Speaker 1: I'm curious. I need to look up the plant in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania that he worked in. The one in Georgia that
Speaker 1: that my grandfather worked in once had its roof ripped
Speaker 1: off by the torn you know. But that's a different
Speaker 1: podcast entirely. So another Yeah, I guess I'll have to
Speaker 1: wait till we until it comes back around again. Uh,
Speaker 1: that was just for you Internet. So another strategy, uh
Speaker 1: as far as the manufacturing and sale of carbon fiber goes,
Speaker 1: is to include post materials processing with the production facility,
Speaker 1: which means that instead of just creating raw carbon fiber,
Speaker 1: which you would you can imagine like think of an
Speaker 1: enormous spool of thread. I mean, it's just the huge
Speaker 1: spools that have this thread that again is thinner than
Speaker 1: a human hair wounds are. In some cases, they're all
Speaker 1: kind of um braided together to make to make a
Speaker 1: rope yarn, Yeah, like yarn or rope. You could just
Speaker 1: buy that stuff, just the raw material there once it's
Speaker 1: been produced, but then that means that whatever you are making,
Speaker 1: you have to have the facility to be able to
Speaker 1: take that raw material and shape it or or otherwise
Speaker 1: post processes and then coated in whatever resin you want.
Speaker 1: So some of these companies are creating that post production
Speaker 1: facility where they can do some of the treatment ahead
Speaker 1: of time so that it's a lot easier for other
Speaker 1: companies to convert this into products. So that way you
Speaker 1: remove a necessary step that the other company has to
Speaker 1: do and make it a more attractive product. So that
Speaker 1: might include weaving the fibers together, braiding them, or treating
Speaker 1: them with those resins for molding, so that you know
Speaker 1: you're not necessarily molding the stuff already, you're just pre
Speaker 1: treating it so that it can be molded faster once
Speaker 1: it gets to whatever company is buying the raw material.
Speaker 1: That's the other reason why this gets expensive, right, because
Speaker 1: not only do you have a two step too big
Speaker 1: step process in just producing the carbon fiber itself, then
Speaker 1: you have the whole manufacturing process of turning the carbon
Speaker 1: fiber into a useful product. So every time we add
Speaker 1: another process, you're adding to the cost. So, uh, anyway,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool idea to try and pare all this
Speaker 1: together to help make carbon fiber a more attractive option
Speaker 1: because obvious slee the demand is there, it's the supply
Speaker 1: that we're trying to to perfect. Right, So this is
Speaker 1: about where we are going to end for today's episode,
Speaker 1: But when we come back next time, we're going to
Speaker 1: go into detail about that manufacturing process, why it's so expensive,
Speaker 1: and what's being done in the industry to try to
Speaker 1: make it less expensive. Yeah, it's a really cool process,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that we decided to make this two
Speaker 1: episodes because I really want to be able to explain
Speaker 1: and and go into exactly what's going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat stuff. That wraps up this classic episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. Published again on June two, two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen. I'll probably have to do an update about
Speaker 1: carbon fiber, do a full episode about what we use
Speaker 1: it for and you know, some of the things that
Speaker 1: we hope to use it for in the future, and
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for topics I should cover
Speaker 1: in future episodes. Of tech Stuff, Reach up to me
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff H.
Speaker 1: S W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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