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