Carbon Fiber Honeycomb Core

Carbon Fiber Honeycomb Core - 2

Kumair manufactures carbon fiber sandwich panels with a honeycomb cores. The picture above shows a laminate with Nomex® honeycomb core and carbon fiber prepreg skins. Like with foam core, honeycomb cores allow the designer to create an extremely low weight, high stiffness flat panel. Although possible with foam, honeycomb core also readily provides a means to create curved panels.

Kumair has the ability to create standard prepreg and high temperature honeycomb core sheets up to 24"x48". Honeycomb cores are available in a variety of cell sizes and thickness up to 1" thick. This gives the designer tremendous flexibility to optimize a design to meet the given space and stiffness requirments.

One of the challenges of designing parts using carbon fiber honeycomb core is integration (i.e. assembly) with other components. It is typical to use bonded inserted, often with flanges that are also bonded to the outer panel surface. Since the honeycomb core itself has very little strength, it is important to properly design each part and its assembly integration so that loads are transferred to and from the carbon fiber skins. Kumair helps customers determine the best way to do this, including CAD design of metal, fiberglass, or carbon fiber inserts and complete system FEA.

Weave Options for Honeycomb Core Carbon Fiber Parts

Kumair has the ability to utilize any carbon fiber weave thicknesses and patterns to construct honeycomb core carbon fiber sheets and finished CNC machined parts. Weave patterns include plain, twill, hexagonal, satin, a variety of colors, and hybrid carbon-fiberglass and carbon-Kevlar® options.

Surface Finish Options

Kumair carbon fiber honeycomb core sheets can be manufactured with a variety of surface finishes. Our standard pressed finish is a semi-gloss pinhole free finish. Spray clear satin finishes are also available, and are both attractive and durable. If your parts will be bonded to other components, a sanded finish is typically the best option. Kumair works with customers to determine the best approach for each application.

If your project requires lightweight, high stiffness-to-weight ratio material, carbon fiber honeycomb core may be a good fit. Call or email us today to speak with an experienced composites engineer. Work with our team to develop a solution that meets the challenging requirements for your project. Kumair specializes in utilizing carbon fiber for x-ray imaging, automation, and electronics enclosure applications.