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For example, as the world transitions to electric vehicles, disposing of their used batteries, some made with highly toxic materials, will be a challenge.

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“Typically, it is only reused to make low-value products like tables or chairs, products that don’t experience heavy forces or loads.

Ultra-light cars made from recycled carbon fibre are a step closer thanks to a new method of recycling, developed at UNSW Canberra, which leaves the product substantially stronger.

Tapered End Mills

“This project was a collaboration with our partner in the automotive industry who wants to investigate building cars out of recycled carbon fibre,” explained Dr He.

Car manufacturers are interested in carbon fibre vehicles as the decrease in weight would make the cars significantly more energy efficient. This would help them to meet the fuel efficiency standard announced by the Australian Government earlier this year. As we transition to electric vehicles, this would also help reduce vehicle electricity consumption, thereby increasing vehicle range.

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However, a UNSW Canberra researcher has developed a new method to recycle it in a way that not only means less of the material is wasted, but also uses less energy and leaves more of it intact and able to be turned into more useful new products.

Faculty of Engineering Bilbao, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Torres Quevedo s/n, 48013, Bilbao-Vizcaya, Spain

“The mechanical performance of objects made from the existing recycled fibres is degraded by 80 to 90 per cent, compared to using new fibres.

Carbon fibre is a costly product to make, which explains the appeal of recycled carbon fibre, in addition to the environmental benefits. Recycling carbon fibre requires one-tenth of the energy needed to produce it from scratch.

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ConicalCompany

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While the recycled carbon fibre produced using Dr He’s method is not yet able to be used to construct a car, it is significantly closer to that goal than before. The new and improved recycled carbon fibre can potentially be used to construct individual parts of a car, such as a roof.

A new method for 5-axis flank computer numerically controlled (CNC) machining is proposed. A set of tappered ball-end-mill tools (aka conical milling tools) is given as the input and the flank milling paths within user-defined tolerance are returned. Thespace of lines that admit tangential motion of an associated truncated cone along a general, doubly curved, free-form surface is explored. These lines serve as discrete positions of conical axes in 3D space. Spline surface fitting is used to generate a ruled surface that represents a single continuous sweep of a rigid conical milling tool. An optimization-based approach is then applied to globally minimize the error between the design surface and the conical envelope. The milling simulations are validated with physical experiments on two benchmark industrial datasets, reducing significantly the execution times while preserving or even reducing the milling error when compared to the state-of-the-art industrial software.

UNSW Canberra researcher Di He said that, until now, recycling carbon fibre had always resulted in the material being heavily degraded.

ConicalReamer

HarveyTool

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“As we make more advanced products we also make them from significantly more advanced materials, and as a result we are creating problems at the end of the life of that product,” Associate Professor Doolan said.

As the world continually takes steps forward in manufacturing and technology, products are built using more advanced materials and become more sophisticated, but also more complicated.

This presents a problem when these products reach the end of their useable life, as they’re either difficult or expensive to recycle, or both.

As it stands, many advanced products either end up in landfill or incinerated, and that is a waste of valuable resources and harmful to the planet.

Carbon fibres are thin strands of carbon that are exceptionally strong and lightweight. The fibres are combined with plastic to create a composite which can be used to construct a variety of products.

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61672187), the Shandong Provincial Key Research & Development Project (2018GGX103038) and the Open Project Program of the National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition (NLPR) (201800013). The first and third authors have been supported by the Spanish Ministry of economy (MIMECOR) Implantación de una solución integral para la fabricación y reparación de componentes de turbo maquinaria (Turbo) and by DPl2016-74845-R Estrategias avanzadas de definición de fresado en piezas rotativas integrales, con aseguramiento de requisito de fiabilidad y productividad. The fourth author has been partially supported by the Basque Government through the BERC 2014-2017 program and by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness MINECO: BCAM Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation SEV-2013-0323.

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“The existing method of recycling involves shredding the composite, which destroys the carbon fibre, before heating it to remove the plastic. After it has been shredded, the fibres look like individual hairs or cotton wool strands.

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UNSW is located on the unceded territory of the Bidjigal (Kensington campus), Gadigal (City and Paddington Campuses) and Ngunnawal peoples (UNSW Canberra) who are the Traditional Owners of the lands where each campus of UNSW is situated.

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Dr He and Associate Professor Doolan, along with their collaborators, recently published their findings regarding recycling carbon fibre in the journal Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing.

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Carbon fibre is commonly used to build aircraft, wind turbines, and it is the primary material used in Formula 1 cars, which need to be as light as possible to increase performance. You might encounter carbon fibre in high-end bicycles and other sporting equipment like hockey sticks or tennis racquets.

One of the lead researchers from the UNSW Canberra Advanced Manufacturing Research Group, Associate Professor Matthew Doolan, said that as the world progressed with engineering and technological advancements, it needed to think more about reducing waste.

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School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai, No. 2 West Wenhua Street, Weihai, Shandong, China

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