3.38 oz. Carbon Fiber / Innegra Spread Tow Textreme® 1162

TeXtreme®'s Spread Tow fabric (STF) is a unique fabric that increases performance as well as reduces laminate weight up to 20%. TeXtreme® 1162 utilizes a 65 gsm unidirectional tape, woven with 15K Carbon Fiber tape overlaid with Innegra™ S fiber, to produce a hybrid fabric with a fiber weight of 3.38 oz/yd2.

Innegra™ fiber is an olefin fiber, a synthetic fiber made from polyolefin polypropylene, that’s tough, lightweight, durable, and water-resistant. When combined with carbon fiber, Innegra™ expands the performance of the carbon fiber and improves impact resistance, damage tolerance and signal transmission. Innegra™ can tolerate a large amount of rubbing, pulling, twisting, and stress without warping or breaking. It’s also impact resistant, hydrophobic and hydrolytically stable, vibration-damping and disperses energy. 

The woven fabric is stabilized with an epoxy compatible binder that is 0.29 oz/yd2 (10gsm) to hold the material together and to allow for easy cuts, trimming or slitting with clean edges and no fraying. The weight of the fabric does not include the weight of the binder and should be considered when determining in the amount of epoxy needed for a laminate.

What makes this fabric different that traditional woven fabrics is TeXtreme®'s proprietary spreading technology. Traditionally, the tow used to weave composite fabrics is round or oblong in nature. This presents challenges when trying to achieve low aerial weights and has shown lower mechanical properties of a fabric because of inherent crimp or waviness that is being introduced in the fibers.

As an example, a typical 200 gsm 3K Plain Weave 50” wide fabric will have about 23,000 places where the weave overlaps, also called a crimp. Each crimp in the fabric has a very small area where excess resin will accumulate. By spreading the tow, the number of crimps is eliminated by over 90% which in turns eliminates the amount of area where excess resin can accumulate. In one yard of fabric you reduce over 21,000 of these super small resin pools yielding a part that is almost 20% lighter than a standard laminate.

• Achieve thinner laminates
• Reduce weight by 20% or more
• Good damage tolerance
• High impact resistance
• Water and chemical resistance
• Desirable appearance
• Smooth and low porous surface finish
• Easy to handle, cut and place

• Formula One & NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing
• Cryonic tanks, aircraft interior components or UAVs
• Hockey sticks and golf shafts
• Thin ply carbon diaphragms
  
  

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