What safety precautions do you recommend teams take when using this product to drill through your carbon fiber tubes?
(For those not in-the-know, you should probably drill carbon fiber parts underwater in an area with adequate ventilation, while wearing breathing protection)
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Maybe include a warning when selling carbon fiber parts (and tools to facilitate the cutting of them) as part of a system that encourages customers to cut and drill carbon fiber?
This feels borderline negligent. What happens when a kid inhales carbon fiber dust after assembling one of your products, following the instructions on your site?
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I’m confident this is AI generated, but I would actually be ok with that as long as you are checking the quality of the output. Considering you’re posting this under your own name, you alone are responsible for the advice given, whether or not it was your writing. Importantly, as a supplier targeting FRC teams, you need to be outlining steps that are realistic for high schoolers on limited budgets and tailored towards the needs of FRC teams. Unfortunately, this is not good advice.
The first three lines are all related to the health concerns, but the steps listed out fall far flat of what is actually necessary for FRC teams. You HAVE to consider that these people are high schoolers and are often under the supervision of adults that do not have a background in manufacturing, let alone machining carbon fiber. Making broad statements that carbon fiber is “no different than any material” is at best incorrect, and at worst grossly underestimates the challenge involved in working with it. Since this statement is so far off the proper protocol for working with carbon fiber, that indicates to me that you either do not know the proper steps (worrying for a supplier of carbon fiber) or did not put in the time to write it out yourself and verify the information. Either way, I have written up an outline of a statement that I think would have been far more appropriate - for your safety and others.
First, careful consideration needs to be taken on whether carbon fiber is the correct material, and whether it is necessary to expect teams to cut it in house. (A lot of the following advice is general, and your product doesn’t require beyond cutting and drilling as far as I can tell. Doesn’t mean safety precautions don’t need to be taken though)
- There are alternatives to CF (its not the magic material a lot of people think it is, and in this case I would venture to guess polycarb or aluminum tubes would work similarly or better)
- There are ways to use CF without cutting (epoxy resin, clamping as opposed to drilling - would also reduce stress risers near the end of the tube)
- There are ways to cut CF not in house (sponsors, etc)
- Cutting it safely requires A LOT of equipment that most FRC teams don’t have
- Even if you have the equipment, it’s REALLY easy to do wrong
- It’s so much more dangerous than people give it credit for - possibly just as bad as asbestos
6b. A lot of the things that make intuitive sense when working with carbon fiber actively make it more dangerous - ie. vacuums without proper filters will just blow the carbon fiber around and make it even more likely to be inhaled, and even one with a proper filter is NOT good enough to contain the dust.
With all that in mind, a product like this should be designed such to absolutely minimize the amount of cutting and working that are required of your customers. And right away, there seems to be low-hanging fruit: you, the supplier, should have an option for teams to request custom sizes, up to a maximum of whatever size stock you have - that, combined with switching to epoxy for mounting, would allow teams to avoid cutting carbon fiber entirely. Not designing with this in mind actively puts students at risk.
Second, if you are going to expect teams to make cuts, then the advice I believe you should be giving to FRC teams is as follows:
- do it outside
- wear well-fitting safety glasses and masks (N95 would be ok, respirator would be better)
- Thoroughly shower and wash any clothes worn as soon as possible after working with it
- AVOID POWER TOOLS - a hacksaw will do just as good to cut the tube and will throw much less dust
- if you need to drill it, do it on the lowest speed that still gets the job done
- Have a second person (also wearing PPE) keeping a steady stream of water to help catch dust
- Ideally, submerge the part completely underwater
- Never, ever machine carbon fiber in house. Leave it to professionals.
All in all, the product is fine. I wish you luck, and I’m always glad to see more diversity in product offerings. Just please be careful and consider your target market.
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I was actually just explaining that to some students yesterday, with “yeah, I got lucky that this is all I walked away with, don’t do like I did”. (Team uses a specialized saw for aluminum. Students were learning on wood. Pictures? They exist. Will they be shared, not unless I need to make a point.)
I think a lot of it is: Aluminum can generally be worked without issues by most people who know a little bit and have general shop equipment. CF requires more specialized knowledge and/or equipment, depending on exactly what you’re doing, if you want to a) get it right and b) be safe. I’m not going to say that everything needs to be spelled out, but I would definitely have links to recommended safety practices and recommended materials for working with CF–bonus if they’re videos of working with the specific product(s) in question, and have options to purchase specialized products.
I used to work in a place that did lots of (dusty) aluminum work in an area. Then they moved some of the carbon fiber work to right across the aisle from us, and the first thing they did was to send someone to brief us on what we could expect and answer safety questions/concerns. My crew wasn’t even touching the CF stuff. Not sure the CF crews got the same for our aluminum work…
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In the grand scheme of things, drilling four (4) holes in a carbon fiber tube is pretty low-risk with any decent amount of precautions. I’m not going to comment on what those precautions may be, but it’s not as if we don’t see CF cut and drilled pretty frequently on FRC robots. Personally though, I think hot glue is better anyway - you’ll get a better bond, especially on PLA, and especially with poor print orientation. Just seems like an easy call to avoid criticism.
There’s some law out there that goes something like this:
“No matter how many precautions one recommends for drilling carbon fiber, they will receive at least one “
” from a CD user who posts another list with one or more additional precautions. This behavior is recursive.”
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I love the authority with which you state that this is negligent. Are you a lawyer?
For everyone losing their marbles over the safety of cutting CF and whether companies are giving appropriate safety information it took me about 5 minutes to find a one paragraph warning in the FAQ’s on Rockwest Composite’s website about cutting CF. You’d never even find the warning if you didn’t go hunting for it, as the product pages don’t mention any concerns with cutting. Rockwest is the pre-eminent supplier of CF tube/plate/profiles in North America. You can see that warning below.
Everyone needs to calm down with the hysteria around appropriate levels of safety warnings.
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The issue I took was with them selling carbon fiber materials as part of a mechanism kit that must be cut in order to use properly, in addition to selling jigs to make the drilling of carbon fiber tubes easier, all while no providing any instructions, safety information, or even a warning. And I would say there’s also a different audience between who’s buying stock from Rockwest, and who’s buying a mechanism kit from an FRC vendor.
I am glad to see them address the concerns raised in this thread, and I also do believe that many of the concerns raised in this thread were unfair, and non-issues.
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This is an interesting phenomenon. While I appreciate very much the rise of companies dedicated to providing supply specifically to FRCFIRST Robotics Competition teams, one of the unfortunate side effects has been an increasing tendency toward coddling of teams.
For example, supply houses like Grainger and McMaster-Carr sell conveyor belting. They don’t tell you how to use it and beyond possibly including an MSDS aren’t going to guide you with safety, workability characteristics or anything else. And we, their customers, know this and aren’t complaining. Counter to this I’ve personally witnessed less charity toward FRCFIRST Robotics Competition suppliers who sell the same product as “wheel tread”.
I think it behooves a team to learn how to spec products like carbon fiber or polycarbonate or aluminum from normal industrial supply houses, research proper uses, and then follow best practices. The onus should be on teams and not suppliers to use products correctly. That’s not to say companies like REV, AndyMark, Vex and others shouldn’t support teams on the products they design and sell, especially on control systems, motors, and other complex and critical parts. And most of them do this. But let’s stop losing our collective tempers at people selling stuff.
An aside, I’ve bought lots of stuff from Rockwest for my team.
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I’ve been largely biting my tongue in this thread. Carbon fiber isn’t the devil many people are making it out to be.
I grew up around that and fiberglass (which both have the same dangers) doing professional boat maintenance in an Mi-OSHA compliant shop. A good shop mask and goggles can be used for drilling holes, for the most part. Especially if you hold a shop vac with a hepa filter near the part while drilling. That’s all you really need.
The real danger comes from the filling and fairing, which require sanding in large volumes. In that case you’re silly not to be in a tyvek suit with a respirator and a built in vacuum on the sander. And that’s an actual professional unit with a filter like a Festool.
The difference between the two is WORLDS apart. There is safety, then there is safety theater.
Submersion? I mean… I guess if your are going to be CNCing huge plates at volume… But just a water mist from your cnc will capture the dust as well.
I feel like there are a whole lot of people who have never worked with the material and are giving some really hot takes when it comes to the dangers.
Also, be aware that companies are routinely changing the chemical make up of the resin. Heating it with flame can release some bad stuff.
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Submerging the part in a small tub of water while drilling it isn’t really harder than puting a HEPA filter on a shopvac and holding it next to the cut…
I’ve made a lot of CF composite parts in my lifetime ranging from FRC components to boat hulls.
The precautions @Cory and @Tom_Line have outlined are consummate with industry practice. The hazards are real, but reasonably mitigated, even in a FRC environment.
If I was cutting carbon tubing with my team, I would advise that we: wrap the cut in painters’ tape, wear some gloves, goggles & and a mask, cut the part outside, and coat the cut end in epoxy.
@RoboBitz this is a cool product. We’ve found the Vex polycarbonate tubing to be brittle and prone to failure at the bolt/hub interface. I’ve never considered carbon intake rollers before, but my wheels are spinning…
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indeed! the plastic pans sold as water-heater catch basins work great for cnc milling medium-sized parts. put a few studs through them with rubber grommets, they will seal perfectly, and use those bolts to hold down your plate for milling.
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You already know that FIRST way prefers the latter, with all the silliness about safety while making high schoolers lift >70 lbs, lower robots down from 5’ in the air, be subject to unreasonable noise levels, etc.
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100% this. I’ve attempted to open a dialogue regarding improving safety at events with my local FIRST representatives on multiple occasions, only to be brushed off and/or ignored each time.
Sadly, I’ve pretty much given up on the hope of improving safety across events as a whole, and now just focus mainly on things that have a direct/immediate affect on my team/students…
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Would something as simple as superglue be adequate for securing the loose fibers? Does the brittleness of it hurt us and if so does E6000 work? Or can we get away with even simpler and just use some hot glue?
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I’m certainly no expert in resin systems and compatible adhesives, but would imagine anything that adheres to the tube and encapsulates the exposed fiber matrix would do the trick. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me can chime in if I’m off base. A lot of my composites experience has been as “forced” labor for mold prep, layup, injection, and post-processing. IIRC we typically used a thickened epoxy to cover cut surfaces, but that was for stuff that needed to last for years under UV and other environmental exposure. I’ll ask my dad (30+ years in high-end composites manufacture/engineering) if he has a blanket recommendation for this application.
I would imagine covering the cut end with a printed part with a lip would work well.
Is there a particular adhesive @RoboBitz would recommend?
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If you would like to coat the cut end of carbon fiber, we would recommend using a CA adhesive meant for composites like Loctite 422. Alternatively you can use a two part epoxy resin of your choice to do the trick.
Typically the only danger of the cut edges of a composite material are slivers from poorly finished edges. Most composites are safe to handle if they are cut and finished properly without any additional coating.
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You’ve jarred my memory. When 364 made extensive use of CF in 2005 (the outer arm and sloped armor), we didn’t have any coating on the cut edges, but they were cut properly and didn’t have exposed fibers.
My memory hasn’t exactly improved since then 
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Much of the discussion here has focused on human safety aspects and while it is great discussion to have and warranted, please also keep in mind carbon dust is conductive and can kill electronics on your robots if it works its way into the wrong places just like aluminum shavings. Any machining of carbon fiber should be done away from your sensitive electronics. Robot or otherwise.
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