Research institute CSIRO and Deakin University in Australia say they have launched a wet spinning line which could dramatically increase the speed of carbon fiber production.
The wet spinning line machinery takes a mix of precursor chemicals and turns it into five hundred individual strands of fiber, which are then wound onto a spool to create a tape and taken to carbonization ovens to create the finished carbon fiber. The CSIRO/ Deakin wet spinning line was custom built by an Italian company with input from the organizations` researchers.
`This facility means Australia can carry out research across the whole carbon fibervalue chain: from molecules, to polymers, to fiber, to finished composite parts,` said Dr Anita Hill, director of CSIRO Future Industries. `Together with Deakin, we`ve created something that could disrupt the entire carbon fiber manufacturing industry.`
This story is reprinted from material from CSIRO, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.