Weblock carbon fiber from composite envisions

General Composites Discussions Composites Talk
#1

I have been testing out this awesome product from Composite Envisions recently and I am so happy with it that I felt it was worth sharing my experience.

Weblock is the name they give to their carbon fiber fabric that has gone through their heat and pressure process. Unlike regular woven cf fabric, their Weblock material can not be easily pulled apart. You can’t accidentally mess up the weave when moving the fabric or pushing it into your mold. It’s pure genius!

I tried a 2x2 twill Weblock. It looks identical to every other 2x2 twill. You notice the first difference when you cut it though. You can cut clean lines without any of the rough edges and pulled threads you get with regular cf. it’s even easier to cut into custom shapes than prepreg.

No matter how much you poke and prod it in the mold, the weave remains intact so you get better-looking parts.

It costs $30 per yard instead of $20 but you only need it for the surface layer and I have made up for some of the price difference in reduced wastage anyway.

The downside is that it is a little stiffer than regular fabric so it doesn’t conform as well to tight corners. I was ok using it with good mold inserts to hold the cf in place but it took me a little longer to lay it neatly in the mold.

Composite Envisions are back in my good books again. I was mad at them last week because their epoxy tooling putty sucked and really disappointed me. This Weblock product more than redeemed them though. It genuinely changes things. Check it out if you haven’t already!

I would like to hear about the results others are getting with it too.

#2

Yeah, I have seen that Weblock fabric. Pretty amazing.

Here is a link to a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUQqmPSPjHo

What’s up with their tooling putty that it sucked?

#3

If you’re buying higher volume (1 roll or more), you can get it much cheaper from other sources. I believe around $15-20/m.

#4

I find all set-weave fabrics a bit of a gimmick. I mean they are great and all, but you can achieve exactly the same thing by misting the back of your regular fabric with spray tack and letting it sit for an hour before cutting. If you are infusing and want even more stability, tack two layers of fabric together.

#5

I’ve tried a lot of the recommended tricks for keeping the weave intact with a wet lay-up and none of them come close to doing what web-lock fabric does.

I am about as skeptical as they come. I dislike gimmicks as much as the next guy and particularly dislike being disappointed by product that claims to do x but falls short. I don’t get excited about products that just work either - I expect that… and I usually believe that companies don’t need me to do their marketing for them but… this product deserves a mention. CE solved a real problem imo.

I recommend buying a yard to give it a try before dismissing it. As far as I know, Weblock is CE’s proprietary process so it all comes from them. At least that is what they claim on their site.

I can’t say that I love all of their products but this one is noticeably better than anything I have tried from anywhere else.

Now obviously… if you have a process you are happy with and never accidentally pull a thread or disturb a weave during your lay-up, then as you were, but my bet is that applies to hardly anyone. I notice disturbed weaves all the time in companies pics of their cf parts and on parts made at all skill levels.

I just like being able to pick up some cf fabric and cut it into a complex shape without the kid gloves and without threads falling out everywhere.

Anyway… to each his own. I just wanted to share my experience in case it helps someone else.

#6

There were too issues with their putty for me. The main one is that it’s is very weak and brittle when cured. The other is the relatively gritty texture during it’s working time. It makes it harder to apply and handle when it crumbles to bits when you pick it up.

I guess I was expecting it to be this superior strength product given that it is called “tooling putty” and sold for making molds that are subject to pressure and repeated use in a professional or semi-pro environment.

I thought it would be an upgrade over the epoxy puttys I bought from Smooth-on. It wasn’t. The Smooth-on products and stronger, cheaper and easier to work with.

If CE was my business, I would discontinue selling that putty and find something a lot better. It’s just not fit for purpose. Making molds is too time consuming and annoying to have them snap after 3 pulls.

#7

100% agree.

I would actually give it a go, I do like trying different products, but CE are a bit of a paint to deal with, at least for me here in Australia. They are pretty reluctant to ship stuff to me, and when they do the shopping costs are huge. I could probably get a meter of the stuff without too much drama, but I hardly see the point knowing that it would be such a hassle if I liked the stuff and wanted to get larger quantities.

Prefer to deal with companies that like to deal with me.

#8

I haven’t got it from CE , I get mine here in oz from CG composite brisbane. There’s is made buy toray probably the same stuff as CE has. It’s brilliant stuff and the first time I used it 5 years ago it’s impossable to go back to normal carbon. Using 3m77 is fine and works well… But if your like cutting multiple templates , basicly cut enough stuff for my next few week’s in advance and I stack them in draws. It’s unbeatable. It’s a very time efficient product with great ease of use.
$58 AUD Per L M 1250mm wide roll.

Cheers

Tim

#9

Yeh I’ve used the stuff from CG, I don’t rate it. For four times the price of my regular carbon (plus freight) I can’t justify it, it’s not four times quicker or easier than making my own set-weave. It also has more wastage than regular carbon, so it is more expensive again.

#10

I understand the price , it’s not always about price… But saying you " don’t rate it" makes it sound like crap. Which we both know is not the case at all and probably the tightest and best made carbon fabrics you can buy on the market with quality pretty unmatched from any other avalable from any suppliers in australia.
I agree for big flat type area’s normal fabric and some spray is fine , as I said stacking 20 or 30 cut templates is hard to beat weave set stuff.
I love to get a link to where you get your regular carbon please , I’m certainly interested in getting some for my fill layers that’s for sure.

Cheers

Tim

#11

I know first hand about the costs of shipping to Australia from America. I’ve shipped projector screens there for my home theater business. Some of the quotes I got for shipping a 55" or 60" tube were $800-$1000+. I eventually gave up on shipping abroad because it cause so many issues for me.

It would only be worth importing if you could buy a lot in one go. Maybe they’ll make you their distributor for the region…

I love Australia . It’s one of the best countries I have been to and I’ve been all over the world. I had such a great time there. It was easy to understand why so many people want to move there.

#12

Yeh my comment about not rating it wasn’t due to the price, that was just a separate comment. But we are really just getting too much into my own opinions here, which is why I didn’t say too much about it.

Honestly the reason I don’t rate commercial set-weave fabrics is because I find they lose too much conformability. I don’t see the point in having a twill weave fabric that can’t shape nicely without relief cuts.

The way I use spray tack to hold the fibres together is to only do it where I need to make cuts, and the rest of the fabric is left as is. That way you get almost the same conformability as a regular twill, but the cut edges don’t fray.

But honestly, these are just my opinion, you’re quite right that there’s nothing wrong with the fabric on its own merits. It just doesn’t suit my purposes and so I don’t rate it.

I can certainly see why if you were making 30-40 templates for simplish moulds, then it would be great. I think for me, I only use dry fabrics for larger parts (so over 1200x600) or very simply small parts like flat sheet, glove box lids, etc. I don’t template for parts that big, it’s a pain in the ass. For anything smaller that has the complexity to require templating, I use pre-preg.

#13

The Weblock product has much better conformability than other stabilized fabrics I have tried. That’s also their marketing message and the reason they are making a big deal about their new stabilizing process.

I was able to make it conform to a fairly complex mold with tight sharp corners. Granted, I was using compression molding (my preferred method for complex shapes) but it did the job. I haven’t tried it with a regular bagging process but I am fairly sure it would work.

The conformability is obviously not as good as non-stabalized fabric but, even with regular fabric, I always need something to hold it in place for smaller details. It’s not like regular 2x2 twill just stays in place on it’s own in a tight corner.

I have definitely had issues with other stabilized products though. I agree that it loses the benefit if the fabric is too stiff to conform to your mold.

My experience so far is that the Weblock product allows me to do more and not less. This is because it’s so tough that you can force it into tight corners without disturbing the weave. It you try to do that with regular fabric, there is a good chance you’ll seperte some of the weave on the surface layer and / make it look less tidy.

They have a video of a guy handling the Weblock fabric on their site to show how it bends and how you can try pulling it apart without damaging it. It’s a good video. It was enough to peak my interest anyway.