In desert ‘aircraft graveyards’, where retired planes often go when flight service ends, good parts are removed and sold and many materials are recycled. Increasingly popular strong, light carbon fibre composites (or carbon fibre reinforced plastics) were once too difficult to recycle, so went to landfill. In the past decade, researchers at Nottingham led by [...]
England Gets Its Own Mount Rushmore made from Fibreglass
England’s most popular footballers of the last 25 years have been immortalised in a new sculpture which imitates Mount Rushmore Artist Aden Hynes Mount Rushmore-style sculpture of four of England’s iconic players was made using fibreglass and concrete and weighs in at 60kgs, it is 1.5 metres wide and 1 metre tall. It features David [...]
Gigabyte X11 All Carbon Fibre Laptop
Taiwanese computer manufacturer Gigabyte has created the world’s first all carbon fibre notebook. The 11.6 inch X11 weighs in it just over 2 pounds which makes it the lightest laptop currently on the market in its size range The machine will ship with an Ivy Bridge processor, a 128GB SSD, two USB 3.0 ports, and [...]
Virgin Galactic’s Space Vehicles Get the Green Light for Powered Flight
SpaceShipTwo Set to Go for Heavy-Weight Glide Tests with Supersonic Flight Targeted for Year End Virgin Galactic have announced that its vehicle developer, Scaled Composites has been granted an experimental launch permit from the Federal Aviation Administration for its suborbital spacecraft SpaceshipTwo and the carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo. George Whitesides, president and CEO of Virgin Galactic [...]
What An F1 Car Looks Like Cut in Half
For the last two years the Sauber F1 Team mechanics have been using their downtime to slice a Formula One racing car lengthwise down the middle with the precision of true craftsmen. Chief Designer Matt Morris quite literally gets underneath the skin of the F1 car, pointing out where and how the individual components are [...]
Core Builders Composites Ship first Wing for Oracle Team USA
The first wing created for the defender of the America’s Cup was rolled out of Core Builders Composites, New Zealand and is on it’s way to America.
Meet the Aircraft with the Fuel Economy of a Car
Half futuristic sailplane and half fighter jet, this five-seat Synergy aircraft is the first example of a new technology for fuel efficient airplanes. A Kickstarter campaign was launched and has been funded to continue with the full scale prototype, John McGinnis the man behind this aircraft believes that days when flying have always been more [...]
Brazilian Composites Industry Reports First Quarter Earnings
Earnings in the Brazilian industry of composite materials totaled USD 366 million in the first quarter, corresponding to an increase of 1.6% in comparison with the last quarter of 2011, and a 2.5% growth when compared to the same period of the previous year. The figures are from Maxiquim, a consulting firm hired by the [...]
Nanotubes in Composites
Case study into the manufacturing impact of Nanotubes in Composites, carried out by the Cranfield University Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre
NASA Funding RCBI Composites Project
NASA has awarded the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing a grant to help fund a $20,000 Composites Technology Outreach Project.
Making a Carbon Fibre Cello
A look at the processes involved in making this innovative Carbon Fibre instrument.