In the field of carbon fiber products, there are the sayings of dry carbon fiber and wet carbon fiber. This distinction is made from the production process of carbon fiber products. The two most common methods of processing carbon fiber composites today are prepreg autoclave molding mode and vacuum introduction mode. Since the wetting method in the use of the cloth is different, there is a manifestation of dry and wet. Let’s look at the introduction and difference of carbon fiber wet forming and dry forming.

The main step of the vacuum introduction process is to arrange the carbon fiber cloth in the prefabricated mold, and arrange the resin in the mold by vacuum pressure to combine with the carbon fiber. This method is fast and low in cost, but the material ratio is difficult to accurately control, and the quality accuracy of the product is high. It is difficult to control. Since the prepreg starts to infiltrate with the resin at the time of production of the carbon fiber cloth, the combination is better and the proportional control precision is high, and the quality and precision of the product are made by the high temperature and high pressure molding.

There are obvious differences in the performance of the products produced by the two processes. The wet process is prone to deformation during the processing and the wire is prone to wire breakage. The combination of resin and fiber is poor, and oxidative discoloration is prone to occur due to contact with air. The dry prepreg process does not occur as described above, but it is prone to performance degradation under ultraviolet light. Recommended to understand: the difference between vacuum forming and autoclave forming of carbon fiber composites

The carbon fiber products produced by these two production methods have obvious differences in weight and hardness. In order to distinguish them, they are called “wet carbon fiber” and “dry carbon fiber”. Compared with dry carbon fiber, the carbon fiber texture of wet carbon fiber will be deformed when vacuum is applied, and carbon fiber filaments will be seen in the cross section, while dry carbon fiber products will not.

The carbon fiber products made by the dry process have good hardness and are easy to be processed by CNC, but the production cycle is not easy to mass-produce and the production cost is high. The wet molded product has lower cost, the production process is relatively simple, and the process production efficiency is high. In the current production of carbon fiber, dry molding is mainly used in the case of high precision and high quality requirements. Wet forming is mainly used in appearance parts and mass production.

by Claudine