McLaren Invented New Carbon Fiber Tape to Build Even More Complex Parts

Carbon fiber has reached a point of borderline oversaturation, even trickling down to borderline-affordably priced performance cars in recent years. But even if we’re not longer as impressed by the use of this once-exotic material as we once were, that doesn’t mean we’ll turn our noses up when there’s an honest-to-goodness industry breakthrough—especially from an engineering outfit like McLaren.

After all, McLaren has been fooling around with carbon-fiber reinforced polymers for the better part of forty years. Feel old yet, F1 fans? But once again, McLaren is doing this in a very McLaren way, leading the industry rather than following. This time around, it’s pioneering the use of an aerospace industry technique known as Automated Rapid Tape Carbon—or simply ART carbon—that allows its engineers to use even less material to produce components of the same strength as previous processes, shaving precious mass from the final product.

“The aerospace industry uses ultra-precise manufacturing methods to build highly tailored carbon fibre structures for the latest generation of air jetliners and fighter aircraft, particularly for large, crucial parts such as aircraft fuselage and wings,” McLaren said in its announcement. “This is achieved via the robotic depositing of composite tapes to layer structures, over traditional hand layup using pre-impregnated materials.”

And the “high rate” version of this process has now been integrated into McLaren’s Composites Technology Centre (MCTC) in Sheffield, U.K. McLaren says that rather than using the aerospace industry’s method of laying tape with massive, ambulatory robotic arms, its process utilizes a fixed arm, while the jig that holds the component being manufactured moves around it. The result is a hybrid between the traditional hand-laid carbon fiber process and something you’d see in additive manufacturing (a.k.a 3D-printing).

“McLaren’s Automated Rapid Tape method […] employs a specially designed machine using a fixed deposition head and a rapidly moving bed capable of rotation, which unlocks a faster manufacturing process suitable for automotive purposes and high-rate composites manufacturing.”

McLaren says this process offers greater design freedom for its engineers, allows them to build components with less waste, and enables more diverse use of the material in its future automotive projects.

“The Automated Rapid Tape production method and ART carbon structures also unlock immense possibilities for the next generation of carbon fibre architectures. Integrating this technology into the structure of an ultra-lightweight, ultra-strong carbon fibre tub – manufactured with minimal waste material generation – that can underpin the next-generation of McLaren supercars is already under consideration,” McLaren said.

Compared to traditional carbon fiber application processes, this appears much more flexible and even “easier” to mold into complex components, though I’m sure there’s really nothing easy about it. As you can see in the video above, the raw material looks like those Cintas floor mats you see at the entrance of a business; with that rubbery, porous, flexible look. Texture wise, it would appear to feel like felt to the touch. Either way, in terms of thickness, strength and flexibility, it can vary from thick and durable like elbow skin, or thin and flexible like eyelids, according to the video.

Now that’s interesting.

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