Carbon Revolution, the Australian company building one-piece carbon fibre wheels for cars such as the Ford Shelby Mustang GT350R, opened its new factory in Geelong yesterday.
Located in the Geelong Technology Precinct at Deakin University’s Waurn Ponds campus, the $24 million facility was supported by a $5 million grant from the Geelong Region Innovation and Investment Fund.
New Federal Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science Christopher Pyne opened the facility and congratulated the company on its success conversion of locally-developed technology into export dollars.
“Carbon Revolution is a modern Australian success story demonstrating the power of applying research and advanced manufacturing technology to develop world leading products,” the Minister said.
“Carbon Revolution exports a range of products to North America, Europe and Japan and has just signed an agreement with a North American aircraft landing gear manufacturer to develop lightweight wheels for use in aerospace.”
The manufacturing process for the carbon fibre wheels begins with the creation of a preformed internal carbon structure, composed of precisely manufactured carbon strands arrayed into woven fabrics. This is then placed into a mold with an RFID chip embedded into its structure, so each wheel can be tracked through a quality assurance system. The structure is then infused with resin and cured at high temperatures.
This process results in a one-piece wheel that ensures maximum strength – eliminating the need to bond or glue the wheel’s spokes and barrel components together. It is also roughly half the weight of a comparable aluminium wheel.
As the wheel cures, 61 individual checks and more than 246,000 data points are logged before it’s released from the machine. To guarantee quality parts, the cured wheels are analysed using a 3D computerized tomography imaging process in which more than 18,000 X-ray images are taken.
If the wheel passes inspection, it undergoes machining for the valve stem and mounting hardware holes before it gets painted, coated, assembled, dimensionally checked and shipped for installation.
Image courtesy: Ford