Dragon Plate
By Lex Dodson
Carbon fiber is quickly making its way into everyday devices, thanks to widespread research into industrialized production and cost reduction. Universities and companies the world over are throwing incredible amounts of money and effort at turning this modern wonder into a commonplace material, and retailers like Dragon Plate are making carbon fiber available to the masses.
While it’s tricky to work with, carbon’s light weight and high rigidity make it ideal for a wide variety of applications. Dragon Plate retails carbon sheets, veneers, tubes, rods, angles, channels, and even some swanky flame-retardant PRC. Of course, this stuff isn’t exactly cheap. A 6″ x 6″ sheet of their cheapest 1/16″-thick “Economy Plate” costs $23.25, and prices go from there… well, into space. A 48″ x 96″ sheet of their flame-retardant plate costs $1,515, and that’s only 0.025″ thick.
Making your own composites is certainly cheaper, but if you run across a small-scale problem carbon fiber can solve, Dragon Plate could be a silver bullet.
Dragon Plate carbon fiber [Dragon Plate]
August 17th, 2009 at 10:32 am
I’d be extremely wary about using any of the dragon plate for an actual structural application. They don’t give any material properties for most of their products, and don’t have any test data for their various unspecified layups. The strength of composites can vary greatly depending on the quality, and construction of the fiber and the matrix. I’d be surprised if any of these are actually better than an aluminum part of the same weight.
August 17th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Wait’ll AlGore finds out about this… we’ll need carbon offset credits to buy any of the stuff.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
far out, man! Now I can make that carbon ladder rack for my work truck!
Now all I have to do is mortgage all my possessions so I can afford enough product for it.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
I work at a university and we buy this stuff for lightweight projects and such. It is much cheaper for NASA mock up projects and such that buying the actual materials they would require you to use but the weight savings and strength are there. Anyhow I found it interesting that it melts when cut it with a bandsaw, but you can cut it with a metal brake, flat bits anyway.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
err meant to say shear not brake, ha
August 17th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Yeah i would assume with the process this is more for pro type projects and high end company usage. Not really a “RETAIL” item…..
and with no MSDS or stress data, kinda a hard sell for any Gov. projects
Don Biery