“By continuing to develop our patented forged composite materials, we are able to create a product that can enhance Lamborghini super sports cars in both their performance and their appearance,” said Maurizio Reggiani, Director of R&D for Lamborghini. As automakers look to the future of increased CAFE standards and lighter-weight vehicles, making parts out of carbon fiber without the extra labor expense is a killer app. This changes the rules of manufacturing because you can now treat carbon fiber the way the automobile industry (and every other manufacturing industry) has treated steel, aluminum, and unreinforced plastic for decades: You just stamp out the parts you need. You can now treat carbon fiber the way the automobile industry has treated steel, aluminum, and unreinforced plastic for decades. The part that comes out of the mold is as light (or lighter) and as stiff (or stiffer) than a conventionally laid-up carbon fiber part, and you can produce it in minutes rather than hours. You just have to cut off the right mass and put the chunk into a hot press mold. Unlike traditional pre-preg carbon fiber cloth, you don’t have to carefully cut this material and lay it out precisely in a mold. This material starts off as a sheet of uncured plastic that is mixed with short lengths of randomly placed carbon fiber strands. Lamborghini’s innovation is a product and a process called Forged Composite. In order to achieve the right thickness, it has to be done multiple times.” Changing the carbon fiber manufacturing process So we have to shape it manually and it takes a lot of time. Then we add all these separate patches because the material does not bend. “Once these are cut, these are placed inside the mold using tools to press down and manually compact the material. “With pre-preg, to get a shape requires us to cut all these shapes individually using an automated cutter,” explains Professor Paolo Feraboli, who left the University of Washington to work for Lamborghini. To make a roof panel or fender, technicians must cut several pieces of carbon fiber cloth according to a pattern, place the pieces in a mold, and then cover the lay-up with plastic sheeting and vacuum-seal it, before curing the part in an autoclave (a big oven.) Carbon fiber is incredibly labor-intensive to form and cure. Carbon fiber has been formed into driveshafts, monocoque chassis tubs, body panels, and every trim piece you can name.īut there are some limitations, too. The reasons to use carbon fiber are obvious – it’s extremely light, offers good rigidity for its weight, it’s relatively easy to work with, you can shape it almost any way you like, and it looks fantastic. Starting with the Countach Quattrovalvole and continuing today, it is one of the most important keys to the success of our cars in the past, present and future,” said Stefano Domenicali, Automobili Lamborghini Chief Executive Officer. “Carbon fiber is a material that Lamborghini has a long history with. Every Lamborghini produced since that time has used carbon fiber to some degree, and the general trend has been more and more fiber in every successive generation. The result was the 1983 Countach, built with a prototype carbon fiber monocoque chassis. Lamborghini committed to composite in 1983, after hiring several composite engineers from Boeing in Seattle with experience in carbon fiber and Kevlar fabrication used to build the Boeing 767 aircraft. How GMC built a carbon-fiber truck bed that laughs at cinder blocks Lambo’s new CEO was there to welcome us, but the real stars of the show were the engineers who might actually change the world. This is the facility where new composite technology is developed and tested before the factory at Sant’Agata Bolognese weaves the material into its next supercar. So when Digital Trends was offered an inside tour of Lamborghini’s new Advanced Composite Structures Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, we jumped at the chance. Anyone can make a trim piece or even a trunk lid out of carbon fiber, but it takes quite a bit more research and technique to build the car’s chassis from fiber.īut let’s be real: relevant or not, the chance to visit a Lamborghini facility and see how it achieves its results doesn’t come along every day. Lamborghini was a pioneer in developing carbon fiber as a construction material for automobiles. So it’s understandable if you think that Lamborghinis are great, but not particularly relevant to your daily life. It’s part of what makes Lamborghinis cool – you don’t see them every day. As an exotic car manufacturer, Lamborghini is accustomed to building small numbers of extremely expensive and advanced supercars.
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