Hi Tech Carbon Fiber vs. Hobby grade plywood.

by x3mperformance | April 10, 2013 | (3) Posted in Tips

I am building a Bixler 1.1 and discovered a little hmmm. Mind buggeling thing, during my build.

 

Just one of those things that make you go Hmmm...

 

And yes, the Carbon Fiber vs. wood talk is not to compare, when talking about strenght, not even close, the CF wins by 1000 of miles.

 

But weight wise... Carbon Fibers is known as a super strong and super light material.

 

That was also my thought, when i broke the support mounting for the wings in my Bixler.

I had to make a new, and Carbon Fiber was the material, strong and light. No question asked.

Take a look for your self.

I broke the wing mount, due to very poor gluing, and needed to make a new.

 

The old one made of hobby grade plywood and the new one, made of carbon fiber.

The result was to my approval. Good!

And a test. The old heavy wood.

 

And the new light weight Carbon Fiber... Or. WHAT???

Yes there are two layers, but they are needed. The plywood is two times as thick as the CF plate.

12 grams heaviere then the wood?

 

Carbon Fibers are not always the way to go.

And do mind, it also shields for radio waves too...

 

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COMMENTS

woodenshoe on April 11, 2013
WOOD the original carbon fiber. Smells good when you cut and sand it.. heats my house.. beat that CF.
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Bjarkix2 on April 12, 2013
Epic reply :D
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thejosh108 on April 12, 2013
What about fiberglass? I have heard that it is nearly as strong as CF and only a little heavier. Down side is that its is no fun working with. I have used fiberglass as a spare, struts and recently wing tie downs, main thing I notice is that it flexes more.
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x3mperformance on April 27, 2013
Fiberglass, is about the same weight, in this size at least.
It's the amount of resin poured into it that desides the weight.

And yes, i know that a smaller and thinner plate, would be strong enough, and all that.
I just wanted to sort out that Carbon not is so lightweight when compared to other materials, at the same mass.
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zodrik on April 10, 2013
carbon is more eavy but stronger then balsa wood(is that balsa?),the only problem i found with carbon fiber is when u make a hole or cut in a plate like yours it becomes much more weak
than wood...the only reason why i like wood is easier to find an more cheap....btw u made a nice plate...
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x3mperformance on April 10, 2013
Thanks, Yes the CF is weakend by drilling holes in it, but that goes for the Wood, too.
And no, its not balsa wood, it's just plain Hobby King Bixler 1,1 plywood. ยจ
And your absolute spot on, Wood is much cheaper, cleaner and easy to repair.
I stick to Wood in the future.
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ddrueding on April 10, 2013
CF is stronger for a certain weight. Making it the same dimensions would make it heavier, but also much, much stronger.
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MDOwn on June 13, 2013
The value of Carbon Fiber is the strength to weight ratio. The same weight can be supported with much less carbon fiber than wood. Also, when using carbon fiber designs need to be altered. The strength in CF lies in which direction the fibers are aligned. woven fiber is good if the design warrants strength in all directions. It looks like you've got CF with one alignment, which is strongest in one direction along the fiber (when designing weight bearing systems these directions have to be taken into account, even with finite element modelling). But what this means is that you can remove more material from the design, as long as you account for which direction the stress will propagate and it will be equally strong. hence the overall weight goes down. There is no point in comparing two equal size pieces of Wood and CF. They work differently.
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bigALUSMC on April 30, 2016
How would cf fair when using thin sheets to help with crash proofing a foam kit?

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x3mperformance

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Hi Tech Carbon Fiber vs. Hobby grade plywood.