Our first step with recycled carbon fibre
Carbon fibre is great for making all sorts of things. It can be used to make parts that are light, stiff and strong. It’s widely recognised as the best material, performance wise, for bike frames and many bike parts. But, as is also widely recognised, carbon fibre has a sustainability problem we are only starting to deal with. Offcuts, end-of-life parts and broken components typically end up in landfill. At Carbon Wasp we don’t have all the answers. What we do have is a plan: to start using recycled carbon fibre, to show what can be done now and help with the ongoing development of the materials and the technology.
What we’ve changed
Every carbon part we now make includes recycled carbon fibre from Lineat Composites, a UK company that spun out of research at the University of Bristol. The recycled material is used throughout our parts but alongside conventional virgin fibres. Depending on the part, the proportions vary, but as an example, in our MTB frames around 10% of the carbon fibre used is recycled. That’s a small proportion for now, but it’s a start and it’s early days.
We’re using the recycled fibres as the visible surface layer of our parts, one reason is that the shorter fibres conform well to the mould shapes and give a good finish, but it’s mainly for cosmetic reasons. You’ll notice the aligned recycled fibres look more like a traditional UD fibre, rather than the 2x2 twill woven fabric we used to use as our surface layer. Some people might prefer the classic looking woven finish, but we think it’s important to highlight the change we made and show what we’re working with.
Why this material
Recycled carbon fibre has been around for a while, but it has often meant short, randomly arranged fibres. One of the main advantages of carbon fibre is the ability we have to control the precise direction and location of the fibres and the way that can be optimised to provide strength or stiffness where it’s needed. Shorter fibres usually means less strength and stiffness and the random alignment of fibres can make its performance unpredictable. Lineat’s approach is different, they still use short chopped carbon fibres but they are able to form them in to a highly aligned uni-directional tape. This results in a final material which keeps around 80% of the properties of continuous fibre. The material is currently recycled from manufacturing and processing waste, which would otherwise go to landfill but can be re-used at less than half the carbon footprint of virgin carbon fibre.
It's also possible to reclaim fibres from end of life parts, including old bike frames, and incorporate those in the recycling process. We are working with other UK companies who can reclaim fibres from old parts that we supply and deliver them to Lineat, who can then process those and deliver a usable pre-preg material we can use to make new parts. We’re not there yet but that’s the end goal.
Why start now?
Recycled carbon fibre isn’t finished technology. Lineat and others are still developing their material and there’s still plenty to learn about how it can be processed and used in real parts. But materials like this will only improve when people use them. Real products give suppliers real feedback. Real orders show the wider industry that demand exists. By building with what’s available today, we hope to play a small part in helping recycled carbon fibre mature and every rider who chooses one of our frames is part of that too.
What’s still to do
We haven’t solved carbon fibre’s sustainability problems, but this is a first step. If we can start to use recycled material to make bike frames, other can too. By proving that there is a demand for recycled raw material we can help speed up the development of those materials to improve the end products and reduce their costs. Ultimately we want to increase the proportion of recycled carbon fibre we use in our parts. We also want to work with our suppliers on things like bio-resins, which are derived from plant and natural sources and agricultural byproducts. There’s a long way to go, but that’s where we are heading.
Come along for the ride
If you’ve got questions about the material, how we’re using it, or what you’d like us to tackle next, we’d love to hear from you – send us a message here.