McLaren Adapts Space Age Carbon Fiber Tape Process To Car Production
McLaren has been on the bleeding edge of carbon fiber technology for more than 40 years now. It all started way back in the '80s when it started using carbon fiber in the construction of its Formula 1 cars. Throughout the decades, McLaren engineers have led the industry in carbon fiber innovations, and have constantly pushed the limits of what you can do with the tough, lightweight, eye-wateringly expensive material. The company even makes the bodies of its achingly beautiful street cars, rolling works of art like the bonkers W1 hypercar, out of carbon fiber.
Never one to rest on its laurels, McLaren recently announced a new frontier in carbon fiber production—carbon fiber tape. This isn't "tape" like hundred-mile-an-hour tape or Honda's spicy, anti-rodent electrical tape. It's no like duct tape or any other kind of sticky tape. No, it's a construction method called Automated Rapid Tape (ART) production, and it was perfected in the aerospace industry.
"The aerospace industry uses ultra-precise manufacturing methods to build highly tailored carbon fiber structures for the latest generation of air jetliners and fighter aircraft, particularly for large, crucial parts such as aircraft fuselage and wings," said McLaren in a recent announcement. "This is achieved via the robotic depositing of composite tapes to layer structures, over traditional hand layup using pre-impregnated materials."
Read more: ChatGPT, Vinfast, And Awesome Honda Concepts: The Biggest Car News To Come Out Of CES
Here's how it works: Traditionally, carbon fiber constructs are made by laying down numerous layers of thin carbon fiber sheets mixed with powerful adhesives and forming them into the shape you want. Kinda like a very expensive papier-mâché. ART, however, combines a huge, fixed robot arm that lays down a continuous stream of thin, flexible carbon fiber ribbon impregnated with adhesive with a jig that moves around the arm. It's essentially a combination of the traditional hand-laid process and 3D printing. This allows the engineers to build lighter, stronger components with less waste. It's also going to allow for more diverse carbon fiber usage in future projects.
"The Automated Rapid Tape production method and ART carbon structures also unlock immense possibilities for the next generation of carbon fiber architectures," McLaren said. "Integrating this technology into the structure of an ultra-lightweight, ultra-strong carbon fiber tub – manufactured with minimal waste material generation – that can underpin the next-generation of McLaren supercars is already under consideration."
The video embedded above does a pretty good job explaining the ART process and how the machine uses the sticky, carbon fiber ribbon (so, I guess it is a sticky tape after all) to make something solid. It's well worth your time, you should check it out.
Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox...
Read the original article on Jalopnik.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hamilton Spectator
30 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
NASCAR goes south of the border to grow fan base with its 1st Cup Series race in Mexico City
NASCAR's first international Cup Series race of the modern era is all about the eyeballs, specifically new fans in the Mexico City market. NASCAR will be on the track Friday for the first of three days of racing at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez, one of the most popular stops on the Formula 1 calendar and Ben Kennedy's newest project. The great-grandson of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., Kennedy has taken the family business beyond its comfortable confines before. Kennedy in 2022 moved the preseason exhibition Clash from its longtime home at Daytona International Speedway in Florida to a temporary track built inside Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum . Kennedy this year moved the Clash to The Madhouse — the historic Bowman Gray Stadium, which had last hosted a Cup race in 1971, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. NASCAR under Kennedy also returned to North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina for the first time since 1977 when the All-Star race was moved there three years ago. He allowed dirt at Bristol Motor Speedway, a hybrid road course and oval at Charlotte Motor Speedway, alongside his biggest undertaking: NASCAR's first street race, held in downtown Chicago. He also had his eyes set on expanding internationally, which will come Sunday with the first points-paying international race in the Cup Series since 1958. It is only third time in 77 years that NASCAR's top series will run an event that counts in the championship outside the United States. The last two times were in Canada; the Cup Series also has held exhibitions in Japan and Australia. 'Our biggest opportunity to grow as a sport is international,' Kennedy said when he announced Mexico City was replacing one of the two races on the schedule allocated to Richmond International Raceway. 'The U.S. is always going to be our mainstay and our next opportunity was to expand internationally,' he said. 'We said we've wanted to do this for a long time, but also needed to make sure it was the right time, the right partners and the right location. Mexico City checked every box. To be in one of the biggest cities globally — over 20 million people that live in the city — is a massive opportunity for us to bring the sport.' The weekend includes the second-tier Xfinity Series and the NASCAR Mexico Series. It's a strong return to a market that devours the entire F1 weekend ticket package within an hour of them becoming available. Mexicans have proven to be rabid motorsports fans but haven't gotten a chance to see NASCAR's big names since 2008, the final year of a four-year run of Xfinity races. Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. were winners during the four-year stretch. Daniel Suarez, the former Xfinity champion and native of Monterrey, is NASCAR's face of the event. He raced the circuit 13 times with a different layout in the NASCAR Mexico Series, and three of Suarez's starts were wins. 'I'm super excited for the event. I'm super excited to live the moment because the first time is going to only happen once,' Suarez said. 'I'm really trying to be as present as possible, enjoy the moment and try to execute the best possible weekend that we can. We know that we are capable of winning the race, but that's not the goal. The goal is the execution of the entire weekend, and hopefully the win is the result of the execution part.' The planning that has gone into Mexico City, one of 38 events on the Cup schedule, began about a year ago. NASCAR has worked on myriad details, beginning with how to get nearly 200 trucks hauling race cars and equipment from Michigan International Speedway into Mexico City. NASCAR official Tom Bryant has spearheaded the organizational logistics and made multiple trips to the border crossing in Laredo, Texas, to meet with customs officials from both nations. The drive from Michigan to Mexico City is about 40 hours, not including the tedious customs crossing, where all the equipment and tools on every NASCAR hauler must be documented on an exhaustive manifest. Cup Series teams cars were scheduled for a Monday night arrival at Laredo, with crossing scheduled for Tuesday and arrival at the track on Thursday. 'It's been a ton of coordination moving lots of people and lots of stuff safely and efficiently across a great distance and an international border,' Bryant said on the 'Hauler Talk' NASCAR podcast. 'There is a lot to it, but the key to it is you just have to define the problem. We've got to get these people and these things from this point to that point within a certain time period,' he said. 'How do we do it in a way that's going to best position us to be ready to go to work as soon as we hit the ground down there? Because this is a pretty tight window.' ___ AP auto racing:
San Francisco Chronicle
38 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
NASCAR goes south of the border to grow fan base with its 1st Cup Series race in Mexico City
NASCAR's first international Cup Series race of the modern era is all about the eyeballs, specifically new fans in the Mexico City market. NASCAR will be on the track Friday for the first of three days of racing at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez, one of the most popular stops on the Formula 1 calendar and Ben Kennedy's newest project. The great-grandson of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., Kennedy has taken the family business beyond its comfortable confines before. Kennedy in 2022 moved the preseason exhibition Clash from its longtime home at Daytona International Speedway in Florida to a temporary track built inside Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Kennedy this year moved the Clash to The Madhouse — the historic Bowman Gray Stadium, which had last hosted a Cup race in 1971, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. NASCAR under Kennedy also returned to North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina for the first time since 1977 when the All-Star race was moved there three years ago. He allowed dirt at Bristol Motor Speedway, a hybrid road course and oval at Charlotte Motor Speedway, alongside his biggest undertaking: NASCAR's first street race, held in downtown Chicago. He also had his eyes set on expanding internationally, which will come Sunday with the first points-paying international race in the Cup Series since 1958. It is only third time in 77 years that NASCAR's top series will run an event that counts in the championship outside the United States. The last two times were in Canada; the Cup Series also has held exhibitions in Japan and Australia. 'Our biggest opportunity to grow as a sport is international,' Kennedy said when he announced Mexico City was replacing one of the two races on the schedule allocated to Richmond International Raceway. 'The U.S. is always going to be our mainstay and our next opportunity was to expand internationally," he said. "We said we've wanted to do this for a long time, but also needed to make sure it was the right time, the right partners and the right location. Mexico City checked every box. To be in one of the biggest cities globally — over 20 million people that live in the city — is a massive opportunity for us to bring the sport.' The weekend includes the second-tier Xfinity Series and the NASCAR Mexico Series. It's a strong return to a market that devours the entire F1 weekend ticket package within an hour of them becoming available. Mexicans have proven to be rabid motorsports fans but haven't gotten a chance to see NASCAR's big names since 2008, the final year of a four-year run of Xfinity races. Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. were winners during the four-year stretch. Daniel Suarez, the former Xfinity champion and native of Monterrey, is NASCAR's face of the event. He raced the circuit 13 times with a different layout in the NASCAR Mexico Series, and three of Suarez's starts were wins. 'I'm super excited for the event. I'm super excited to live the moment because the first time is going to only happen once,' Suarez said. "I'm really trying to be as present as possible, enjoy the moment and try to execute the best possible weekend that we can. We know that we are capable of winning the race, but that's not the goal. The goal is the execution of the entire weekend, and hopefully the win is the result of the execution part.' The planning that has gone into Mexico City, one of 38 events on the Cup schedule, began about a year ago. NASCAR has worked on myriad details, beginning with how to get nearly 200 trucks hauling race cars and equipment from Michigan International Speedway into Mexico City. NASCAR official Tom Bryant has spearheaded the organizational logistics and made multiple trips to the border crossing in Laredo, Texas, to meet with customs officials from both nations. The drive from Michigan to Mexico City is about 40 hours, not including the tedious customs crossing, where all the equipment and tools on every NASCAR hauler must be documented on an exhaustive manifest. Cup Series teams cars were scheduled for a Monday night arrival at Laredo, with crossing scheduled for Tuesday and arrival at the track on Thursday. 'It's been a ton of coordination moving lots of people and lots of stuff safely and efficiently across a great distance and an international border,' Bryant said on the 'Hauler Talk' NASCAR podcast. 'There is a lot to it, but the key to it is you just have to define the problem. We've got to get these people and these things from this point to that point within a certain time period," he said. "How do we do it in a way that's going to best position us to be ready to go to work as soon as we hit the ground down there? Because this is a pretty tight window.'
CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
OpenAI hits $10 billion in annual recurring revenue fueled by ChatGPT growth
OpenAI has hit $10 billion in annual recurring revenue less than three years after launching its popular ChatGPT chatbot. The figure includes sales from the company's consumer products, ChatGPT business products and its application programming interface, or API. It excludes licensing revenue from Microsoft and large one-time deals, according to an OpenAI spokesperson. For all of last year, OpenAI was around $5.5 billion in ARR. Reaching its meteoric growth rates requires a substantial amount of cash. The San Francisco-based startup lost about $5 billion last year. OpenAI is also targeting $125 billion in revenue by 2029, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details are confidential. The Information first reported on OpenAI's revenue ambitions. The new revenue metrics gives some context to OpenAI's monster valuation. OpenAI closed a $40 billion funding round in March, marking the largest private tech deal on record. At today's metrics, OpenAI is valued at about 30 times revenue, which highlights the hyper growth expectations by some of its largest investors. OpenAI is backed by Japan's SoftBank, Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter, Thrive and others. OpenAI burst onto the scene with the release of the consumer version of ChatGPT in late 2022, and began launching business products the following year. As of late March, OpenAI said it supports 500 million weekly active users. The company announced earlier this month that it has 3 million paying business users, up from the 2 million it reported in February.
