RE: McLaren Celebrates 30 Years Of Carbon Fibre

[ghibbett]

Yes Carbotech have a large investment with the MP4-12C tub - they've significantly increased their footprint with the new production area. I was trying to sneak a look whilst there last year, but didn't manage to see a lot.

[Gizmo!]

Liokault said:

Chris-R said:

As I understand it the difficult bits are getting resin all the way round the six part steel mould tool, with the sort of consistency required for repeatable millimetric tolerances after oven curing. There's also a patented process for moulding in the hollow cavities in the sidewalls of the monocell. I'm not sure how high tech that all is from a carbon producer's point of view, but McLaren seems to think it's pretty cutting edge.

Not sure about millimetric tolerances. When I was there they were having trouble getting variances of less than 14mm. Was in the early days though, I'm sure it’s much better now.

Did you read the article? 1mm corner to corner. Sounds OK to me.

What amazes me is that McLaren have gone from nowhere to being THE car that everyone's talking about this year (and all the reports say there's a lot to talk about). Compare that to, say, the Farbio...

[Life Saab Itch]

Liokault said:

But its only modified green sand casting, not that hightech really or am I missing something?

Sorry, I've just read this again.

If you read the article, it states that they are using metal moulds.

So, in short, nothing like green sand casting.

Maybe you're getting confused with another part of the car?

[BoxerF50]

I noticed one mistake in the article:

Since those early days of carbon fibre in F1, McLaren has led the field with the material in road cars too - the McLaren F1 being the first road car to use a carbon chassis

The Jaguar XJR-15 was the first road car to use a carbon chassis. The XJR-15 predated the McLaren F1 by a year.