CW Blog

A large market for composite structural components may be opening up within a decade, and recycled carbon fiber may be the key. At least, this seems to be the promise proffered by the recent completion of a prototype rail bogie by a United Kingdom industrial-academic consortium. Bogies are the four- or six-wheel trucks that support rail vehicles and provide traction and braking. Usually each rail vehicle has two bogies, one near either end. Funded by the U.K.’s RSSB (Rail Safety Standards Board), the composite bogie prototype represents the culmination of a three-year effort, which has included conceptual and design work, materials testing and qualification, manufacturing engineering and fabrication of the bogie and assembly with standard fittings. The bogie, which is made primarily with recycled carbon fiber composites but is supplemented with virgin carbon fiber composites in places requiring additional strength or stiffness, was the subject of two presentations at the “Unlocking Innovation Scheme — Composites in Rail” event in June 2019, and was unveiled during a subsequent “Unlocking Innovation” event in Dec. 2019.

In efforts toward sustainability, some people compost the waste from their morning coffee grounds. McDonald’s, on the other hand, is turning its coffee waste into automotive composites. Announced on Dec. 4, Ford Motor Co. (Dearborn, Mich., U.S.) has teamed up with fast-food chain giant McDonald’s USA (Chicago, Ill., U.S.) to turn coffee chaff — the dried skin of the coffee bean that peels off naturally during roasting — into commercial vehicle parts such as headlamp housings.

In November, Scotland-based spaceflight company Orbex (Forres, U.K.) offered a peek into its rocket factory, sharing photos of how the company is using advanced engineering techniques and materials to create next-generation, renewably-fuelled orbital launch vehicles. 

Source | Pocket Tripod

Yesterday, CW editor-in-chief Jeff Sloan sent me a link to a cool gadgety thingy for a holiday gift idea that set the two us off on an end-of-day wild goose chase for carbon fiber gift ideas. Holiday earworms ran through my head as I searched for carbon fiber gadets, thingamabobs or, to quote the Grinch, any manner of tartinkers, jingtinglers, flufloopers, tartinkers, whohoovers and garginkers.