Apple to Adopt Carbon Fiber for Lighter MacBook Air?

[hihater]

LOL, an "Innovation company"! Please!
Anyway, yes, they design their computers. But are you seriously thinking that that is _defense_ for the poor engineering?


For the record, she's very lucky to have one of the few surviving ones.


I don't care if a computer looks "boring". It's a tool. And it should be rugged, unless you you just want it to lay on said coffee table as a coffee table book looking "neat".


What? Who said that? But you do know, that it's not the entire notebook which is done like that, right? You can take the bottom off, so it's not a one-piece.


Are you done with your strawman?



It revolves around what can be done within constraints. Good engineering will make beautiful working solutions. Just slapping parts together is not good engineering as you seem to imply.


Take a look at the millau bridge:

Sweet, isn't it?

The thing is, the Millau bridge amongst many other things aren't exactly done by thinking "oh, it hasn't been done before, thus it cannot be done". That, at best, is ignorance to what engineering is, and at worst a full on strawman argument.



Ah, you weren't done with the strawman argumentation. See above.


Magic? Innovation? Are other companies not innovating, and are you seriously suggesting that on the laptop front Apple has "innovated" much or jumped much "into the future"? If anything, they throttling back to the lowest common denominator. The ditching of firewire and removal of choice isn't exactly what I call "innovation", nor "a springboard to the future".


Wow. What a twisted way of saying that they will disregard the demands and basic premises for good engineering to cater to the people who buy stuff on looks alone.


Ah, yes, it's "innovative" designing a laptop that looks thinner than it is, introducing a shape that makes good engineering an impossibility, resulting in numerous workarounds such as a mechanical plastic lid for the plugs and core shutdowns.




Sigh. The stench of fanboyism is becoming too rancid for me.

So let me guess you know more about engineering than the good ol' folks at Apple?

 

[offwidafairies]

i guess there wont be a price drop any time soon then...

 

[MakNut]

Carbon Fiber Won't Save Weight

I remember from my days as an avionics engineer at a defense company, that my material science colleagues always commented that equivalent strength carbon fiber weighs virtually the same as aluminum. They only way Apple will get a lighter laptop is to move to more exotic materials- perhaps magnesium, titanium, etc. It's a density/thickness/strength equation that must be optimized to reduce weight. Depending upon world stocking levels of the exotic materials, they might get a good break on the material, but manufacturing costs may drive pricing up, depending upon the solution selected.

CF looks nice, but as others have pointed out, it scratches/dents easily, does not conduct heat, and really is no lighter than the aluminum it replaces.

I'd recommend Apple keep looking into other materials.

 

[Kwill]

Why lighter? Are the Apple notebooks crushing the elderly customers laps? Next thing you know, the display will be heavier then the base and we can't open it up past 90 degrees.

The goal is to whittle the MacBook Air down thinner than a DVD so there will be a valid excuse for not including a SuperDrive.

 

[macadam212]

Straight from 9 to 5 Mac

Carbon Fiber rumor debunked
Wed, 11/12/2008 - 16:19 — Quincy Pince-Nez

MacBlogz is echoing some of what we've been hearing from our sources. The recent rumors of a carbon fiber MacBook not only don't make sense from a aesthetic standpoint, they also don't make sense from a materials standpoint. Our source said that anyone who knows materials science will know it is made up. Real carbon fiber can't be used in a laptop effectively - while it is strong, it can't be fastened to aluminum or other metals effectively. MacBlogz echoes this sentiment:

As an engineer who designs carbon fiber parts, I know it’s an amazing material, but it has its limitations. Ultra light and strong organically shaped structures: Yes! Small intricate parts: No. Laptops from Sony and VooDoo claim to be made from carbon fiber, but it’s not the woven type you see on a Formula 1 car. Its merely injection molded plastic with tiny little pieces of carbon fiber in it. One could call it a marketing ploy.​

Full storey here: http://www.9to5mac.com/no-carbon-fiber-macbooks-coming

 

[flottenheimer]

Carbon fiber notebooks... Yes and WOW!

I instantly fell in love with this material when I bought my über-cool, ultra-light, Diamond Back carbon fiber mountain bike. And I've missed this material ever since my über-cool bike was stolen.

 

[flottenheimer]

What's the environmental impact of carbon fiber vs. aluminium - does anyone know?

Apples focus on becoming as green as possible isn't going to go away soon.

 

[MAcNIAC]

Bike frames are not a good comparison, because they are NOT designed to maximize stiffness like computers are. A perfectly stiff frame will rattle the rider's bones to powder.
CF is preferred over Al not just because of its better strength, but because it simply has better structural properties all around, including better damping, higher failure strain (can "flex" without breaking), greater fatigue life, and more flexibility in design.
I can't comment as to why their weights are nearly the same, a quick check online yielded about a 15% weight advantage for CF.

Al vs CF for bikes is an argument that has been going on in cycling forums for decades - yawn. You are right bikes are not designed to be maximally stiff, but to absorb vibration etc - this is one advantage of CF in bikes - it can be made more absorbant than Al. The other one is about marketing.

Weight saving by going to CF vs Al is very minimal - and that was the point of my comparison - so dont expect much in the way of weight saving by going to CF from Al in a laptop the size of a Macbook air !

The netbook crowd have shown how to get weight down
1. reduce the size of the screen - they're heavy and they draw power
2. thus you can get away with less battery (big weight saving)
3. build it out of plastic, al, CF whatever - matters little to weight

 

[OrangeCrush]

Carbon Fiber

I work for a company that makes carbon fiber. Let me clear up some misconceptions:
--You won't see much in weight savings. I generally tell people it weighs about the same as aluminum, with the strength of steel
--Quality and cost are very closely related. For those who say the resins tend to crack on carbon fiber, well, you had cheap carbon fiber. There's a big difference between sporting goods grade and aerospace grade fibers and resins.
--It's more expensive than aluminum, unless you are comparing the cheapest fiber to the most expensive aluminum, then it may be close.
--Forget green. I've never seen a recycling program for carbon fiber, and don't see one anytime in the near future.
--Shaping or molding the fiber is easy. The fiber is impregnated with a resin, so it is a cloth in it's raw material form. All you do is lay it in a mold, apply heat to melt the resin, then let it cool and it's solid.

Neat idea, people are always finding new ways to use the stuff. I say it could be good for my company, so go for it.

 

[fteoath64]

CF Base, but a bit deeper.

I have the thinness of the AIR, it looks and feels nice, but I want to see a CF like base that is thicker by a few mm like 4 or 5mm so they can stick a long-life secondary battery. Well, Lithium polymer can be molded to any shape and give the AIR a 8 hour or 10 hour battery life.

That will change the dynamics of usage for some AIR users.