McLaren Invented New Carbon Fiber Tape to Build Even More Complex Parts

Carbon fiber has reached a point of borderline oversaturation, even trickling down to borderline-affordably priced performance cars in recent years. But even if we’re not longer as impressed by the use of this once-exotic material as we once were, that doesn’t mean we’ll turn our noses up when there’s an honest-to-goodness industry breakthrough—especially from an engineering outfit like McLaren. After all, McLaren has been fooling around with carbon-fiber reinforced polymers for the better part of forty years. Feel old yet, F1 fans? But once again, McLaren is doing this in a very McLaren way, leading the industry rather than following. This time around, it’s pioneering the use of an aerospace industry technique known as Automated Rapid Tape Carbon—or simply ART carbon—that allows its engineers to use even less material to produce components of the same strength as previous processes, shaving precious mass from the final product. “The aerospace industry uses ultra-precise manufacturin ... Read full article.