Hi All,

As some of you may have noticed, we added a new very special offer to our website last Friday which was our new 'Black Stuff' carbon fibre cloth. There's plenty of information about the product on the Black Stuff - Cheap Low Cost Carbon Fibre product page but basically what we've done is identify that there are lots of occasions where a more basic spec carbon fibre might be all that's needed and so we looked into what the lowest possible price such a cloth could be made for. What we came up with is a fibre that we can sell direct to customers at £10/sqm for a 10m roll or £9/sqm for a 100m roll. I think I can say with confidence this price has never been offered for this quantity, in the UK or across Europe.

The reason for the post is not really to promote the material, it's flying off the shelves and our first batch will be gone soon without my help but what I did want to do is see if anyone had used it yet and had any feedback on it or if anyone had any questions about it. It's easier to discuss these things in a thread than individually with customers .

If you have used the fibre, let me know what you thought. To offer it at half the normal price clearly we have to compromise a bit and I'm interested to know what people think. Also, if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Best regards, Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

Hi Matt

Tight, Scotsman 

Carbon Copies Ltd

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the feedback. Certainly when we're running the fabric through our rolling machine we do see some occasional weaving errors (pulls) and stray fibres that we wouldn't accept for our usual high-spec fabrics but you're right to say that generally it does look very good (especially for the money). I'm sure you'll get on fine with actually using it but please post and let me know. I don't think there will be any suprises there; to me it feels a little bit 'stiffer' than our usual 3k fibres but there's not much in it and it laminated nicely.

I'd be interested to hear anyone else's feedback too.

All the best, Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

I received today my 10m roll. I am very happy, looks great and the plot has more distortion than usual to work a little with it, is a great help for professionals in small businesses have inexpensive material, and so to make pieces that compete with coming from asia. Would be great if they complete the range of low cost with other types of fabric or resins, such as unidirectional carbon, carbon / kevlar ...

www.ktuning.es  

Hi Manu,

Thanks for the feedback; I'm glad you like the material. That's an interesting idea regarding doing a wider range of low-cost materials - this would certainly be possible the demand was there. We've made a few calls to other customers who have purchase the material and the feedback seems really positive so we're looking into running a bigger batch. It's likely we'll run out some time before the next batch though so just a word of warning, if you do need more material in the near future then it's almost gone!

Once again, thanks for the feedback and I'll start considering what other reinforcements we could perhaps do the same with.

--Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

Matt,

Hi John,

Sure, the fabric is woven in 100m rolls (which is normal for a 200g cloth). We sell the fabric in 100m rolls and 10m rolls. When we sell a 10m roll, we create the roll on a 'rolling machine' which is just a simple automated machine for rolling off the master roll and accurately measuring onto another roll. We set the machine to 10m and it will measure off exactly a 10m roll (plus 40mm extra for the 'tape line').

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales

Hi Matt,

Hi Lawrence,

Thanks for the feedback. The Black Stuff is proving popular so we may well look into doing something similar with 12k fibre which could be something like a 450 or 650g.

--Matt

Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales