Hello CW in VT and All,
We may not have enough data presented yet to comment on the strength of the Forged Composite vs. layup carbon fiber.
But if it is as strong as Callaway indicates we may hear stories like;
“I was tooling down the freeway and my Lamborghini bike came off the rack, rolled a few times, got hit by a 16 wheeler - going under the wheels, and … would you belive it? … there was some minor tire damage to the 16 wheeler but my bike was unscathed after we used a crow bar to pry it from between the tires.”
“Yeah, I left my Callaway bike for a couple of minutes leaning against the back of the car to get a drink of water, my wife came out and backed over it, damn, I had to get a new car tire, but it didn’t hurt the Forged Composite bike or wheels.”
This article tells a bit about fabrication and indicates there could be some cost savings in production - also the greater accuracy of parts could help in bicycles that have rear wheels fitting close to the chain stays by eliminating/reducing production differences in tolerances.
http://www.cybergolf.com/golf_news/forging_the_latest_driver_revolution
Excerpts:
What, you may ask, could an American golf-club manufacturer want with the maker of exotic Italian sports cars? Or, if you’re looking at it from the automobile enthusiast’s perspective, why on Earth is the firm that makes the sort of cars James Bond dreams about getting into bed with a firm that makes golf clubs for Phil Mickelson and John P. Hacker?
As it happens, the two organizations are at the forefront of a technological development that promises to provide the world with both incredibly light, strong and fast cars, and amazingly light, strong and fast drivers (the golf club, not the person operating the light, strong, fast cars). Actually, it’s Callaway that has led the move, **working with the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Assistant Professor Dr. Paolo Feraboli specifically, in a quest to find the perfect composite - a material so light, strong and fast, it will render all-titanium drivers obsolete. **
“We used some lab facilities at UW and the folks from Lamborghini were interested in using the same lab facilities to do some similar work,” Callaway’s Senior VP of Research and Development Alan Hocknell told Automobile Magazine in October 2010. “It was at that point that our paths crossed. The guys at Lamborghini realized we had been working in that area for about four years, so we had already gathered knowledge and experience in how the material behaves in different forming-process parameters.”
The result of all the research is a carbon-based material called Forged Composite (FC) in which over half a million turbostratic carbon fibers are concentrated on every square inch, making it a third the density of titanium but significantly stronger. That allows for a greater load carrying capacity per unit mass in bending (80% greater than titanium, in fact) which, in terms non-Ph.Ds might understand, means that when the lighter-weight clubhead bends and stretches at the moment of impact, it remains strong and cohesive which, in turn, means more powerful shots.
In turbostratic (not a ghastly made-up marketing word but an actual scientific term) carbon fiber, sheets of hexagonally-arranged carbon atoms are folded over each other randomly, giving this form of carbon higher tensile strength.
**With graphite, also made up of carbon atoms, the sheets are stacked up alongside each other in a far more regular pattern, making the bonds between the sheets relatively weak. This explains why graphite is brittle and crumbles fairly easily. **
“We can now form the crown with composite in all directions,” says Luke Williams, Callaway’s Director of Product Design. "Because of the nature of Forged Composite and the new forging process we use to make, it takes four minutes to heat the composite. Carbon fibers are suspended in a matrix which moves with the consistency of toothpaste so can therefore be pushed into all parts of the machine tool, ensuring the absence of voids and strength in all parts of the structure.
The clubhead is not only stronger but also much more consistent. Using an old laminate carbon tool, we would find the walls of the crown weren’t always uniform. With the new process, we can optimize the FC down to one-thousandth of an inch."
While finding a suitable grade of carbon for the job is one thing, knowing what to do with it is quite another, adds Williams. “This is high-tech stuff,” he says. "The R&D is very expensive and requires a certain level of expertise. This is not the sort of thing someone tinkering in his garage is going to discover.
We’ve been riding the coattails of the aerospace industry for a while, but we’re now right at the forefront of composite technology. It’s very exciting."
http://www.aa.washington.edu/faculty/feraboli/
Excerpts:
Paolo Feraboli joined the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics of the University of Washington in the summer of 2005, as Assistant Professor in Aerospace Structures and Materials. He is the Director of the Advanced Composite Structures Laboratory (ACSL), which was named after Automobili Lamborghini in October 2009 following a generous unrestricted fund for its establishment.
Dr. Feraboli has received research funding from The Boeing Company, the Federal Aviation Adminstration (FAA), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Callaway Golf, Hexcel Corp., Toray Composites of America, and Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. on various research projects related to the development of analytical and experimental techniques for composite materials. He is particularly interested in composites aircraft safety and certification, including impact damage resistance and tolerance, lightning strike damage, and crashworthiness.
In 2007 he was actively involved with the methods development of the composite-intensive Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and worked in the 787 Technology Integration group under Dr. Al Miller.
Cheers,
Neal
