
Lamborghini Is Forging Ahead with Forged Carbon Fiber - dmmalam
http://blog.caranddriver.com/lamborghini-is-forging-ahead-with-forged-carbon-fiber-we-visit-their-u-s-based-lab/
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arcanus
Has Lamborghini ever made a car that had actual technical merit as a racecar?

I'm general, supercars are vastly overpriced for what you get. You can easily
crush most for a fraction of the price with a dedicated track car. But
simultaneously, no supercars are remotely practical on the road, and in fact
are not even fun to drive on the street because of speed limits.

Some supercars _have_ been a good investment, such as the Mclaren F1, but the
majority depreciate immediately.

I don't really see the point.

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FussyZeus
Well yeah but since Audi bought them they actually have decent guts as opposed
to just being really pretty show ponies.

The Aventador was an R8 with a really good bodykit and there was NOTHING bad
about that, it was the first Lambo in a long time that could actually take a
corner at speed.

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Viper007Bond
The Gallardo was the rebodied R8. The Aventador is a true bonkers Lamborghini.

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FussyZeus
Ah, quite right. Not enough coffee when I made that comment, thanks.

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aetherspawn
I would predict that this manufacture method, with many small cut-up pieces of
carbon, is going to produce relatively weak parts in comparison to equivalent
twill prepreg, thus you'll need more carbon to reach the same strength and it
will be heavier.

Carbon is good in tension because you're pulling a whole bunch of atomically
perfect lightweight strings, but when you have chopped up fragments like this
you're really only casting resin with reinforced mashed bits. Additionally, in
real carbon parts you orientate the fabrics to get perfect tension/compression
in the direction of the loads, or use multiple orientations bonded together
for good all-round strength, but this manufacture method would have randomly
oriented fiber directions.

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jacquesm
It's just marketing. The buyers know about as much materials science as the
average office worker and will not have a clue about what the real
applications of carbon fiber are like. They simply associate carbon fiber with
'modern, good, expensive, strong'.

Most likely they would not be able to appreciate your comment.

At a sailmaker where I worked in NL we worked on laying carbon fiber manually
and laminating it to make sails that had almost no stretch for race
applications, your comment is spot on and exactly why this whole exercise is
pointless. It's all about getting long strands of fiber along stress lines and
to make them denser where the stress is highest, a pour like described in the
article negates a whole pile of the advantages that carbon fiber has. But it's
a lot more efficient than laying long fibers and it still uses the same
material so it will be sold.

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nxzero
>> "Forged Composites (FC) carbon fiber looks more like marble or burl wood
versus the traditional black woven fabric carbon fiber"

Not that I'd ever buy a supercar, but personally think the look of FC looks
cheap compared to the woven carbon fiber.

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rhizome
Looks like what Campagnolo has been doing to make their high-end equipment:
[http://www.wigglestatic.com/product-
media/5360052668/campy-r...](http://www.wigglestatic.com/product-
media/5360052668/campy-record-chainset.jpg?w=1000&h=1000&a=7)

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geon
From wikipedia about forging:

> As the metal is shaped during the forging process, its internal grain
> deforms to follow the general shape of the part. As a result, the grain is
> continuous throughout the part, giving rise to a piece with improved
> strength characteristics

This process seems to be just casting. Why do they call it forging?

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Neil44
It seems they call it that because of the goal to use this process to replace
forged metal parts. I agree though it seems misleading.

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walrus01
"Carbon fiber everything" is a really great marketing strategy for a veblen
good, primarily because CF is light and looks sexy, but I'm not sure it's a
huge technical achievement. If you look at full-CF road bike frames in 2002,
2003 or so they were a super premium priced hand crafted thing. Now they are a
commodity item from China and Taiwan that you can buy for $600 if you're
building your own road bike. Example: "Chinarello" (Pinarello):

[https://www.google.com/search?q=chinarello&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8...](https://www.google.com/search?q=chinarello&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b)

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Obi_Juan_Kenobi
I still ride a cheap mail-order monocoque road bike from ... 2004? The
knockoffs were available pretty much from the outset as they generally were
just used molds or copies, all made in the same factory. Still rides
beautifully and I've never seen the need to 'upgrade'.

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jontaylor
Reducing weight in the connecting rods should mean that the engine can rev
higher.

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ekekekekekekl
Looks like they've found a way to profitably leverage recycled carbon fiber.

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rconti
Upcoming mid-engined Corvette? This is the "Duke Nukem Forever" of the car
world.

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TrevorJ
Somehow they will still manage to make sure it corners poorly too.

