What is the point of Carbon Fibre Base?
Does it make a difference?
isaac
Lighter, stiffer, stronger.
Makes a pretty big difference.
On the downside, where metal is flexible, Carbon Fiber isn’t (in comparison). CF will crack / crush if subjected to an extreme impact… make sure you’ve got non-CF bumpers on that seat!
That being said, CF handles a lot more stress than metal, without flex. You can crank on your handle all you like when doing a big hillclimb and your seat / handle will stay in place, guaranteed.
If it weren’t so expensive to produce, it would be the stock option for all unicycles. The stuff rocks.
Why does everyone think that Carbon Fiber is stiffer than metal.
It is NOT!!!
Aluminum is about twice as stiff as the stuff BUT it IS stronger and lighter.
It is exponentially stiffer than the plastic in your handle.
I doubt you really know what everyone is thinking.
“Stiff” is not a very accurate term to use when describing materials… and you’re not being very clear about “strength”. I get the impression that you do not know what you’re talking about, but I could be wrong.
Materials exhibit several types of measurable strength: tensile, compressional, flexural, torsional, and some others.
CF has a better tensile strength than steel, but tensile strength only exists in the plane of the fibers. That is, if you were to try and stretch CF, it’d take more force to stretch it than it would a comparable piece of steel.
Where we see weakness in CF is in compressional or impact strength. Compared to steel, CF is brittle in these regards… CF fails catastrophically when bent at right angles to the fiber, whereas steel will simply deform.
With this in mind, one should see that a CF base derives its rigidity through its shape… with a horizontal base encircled by a vertical “rim”, the base exhibits flexural strength in many directions. A “flat” CF base with no rim would have very little flexural strength in comparison to a similar steel base, which is why we don’t see any flat CF bases on the market… but we do see flat steel reinforcement plates.
Does that clarify your confusion, Joe?
No because I wasn’t confused.
I was stating facts, I’m sorry if I sounded dumb and uninformed but my dad and I have had many conversations about this and since he is a structural engineer at spirit aerosytems I think he knows what he is talking about.
P.S. When I say stiffness I mean rigidity.
Without going into too much detail, you should ask your dad for some clarification. Your answers suggest a simplistic evaluation. Maestro speaks some sense: it is not easy to be simplistic yet accurate. What you do with a material will affect how the “man in the street” sees it. As a unicycle frame, CF may seem quite a stiff material. But ask any fisherman about his CF rod, and he will confirm that, in that form, it has a great deal of very useful and indeed essential, flexibility. So whilst the definitive properties depend upon the material and its physical make up, there is an additional layer which defines the properties of any object made from that material, or from bundles of that material. This layer might be referred to as more of a layman’s definition.
As Maestro suggests: it depends exactly what you are talking about, and you need to be very specific.
Nao
Didn’t read all of that to start. Yeah, It makes one hell of a difference. I hate using my plain kh base now it feels like a sloppy piece of shit. I just got my second base so now both my unis will rock a cf. I almost though about making one from metal, but got me it would be more expensive. CF is sooooo much better. It makes everything feel better.
Well carbon fibre is apparently stronger then steel. So wouldn’t that make it stronger and stiffer??
Depends.
As stated before, carbon fiber is not isotropic - that means it won’t have the same properties when pulled from different directions. The properties depend on the direction of the weave. A single carbon fiber is much stronger in tension than steel, though, that is correct.
Also, don’t generalize stronger to stronger and stiffer. These are two separate things, and “stronger” is a very vague word: stronger in which way? I imagine that a single carbon fiber is stiffer, though I’m not sure, but the weave need not be. These properties are also dependent on the matrix that the carbon fiber is in, such as plastic or epoxy.
Don’t want to jump on your case, just trying to raise public awareness.