10mm (8mm) Carbon Fibre Square Box Section 

Many people prefer the natural finish of these carbon products, however if you wish to paint them for your specific application then you can do so. A light key with a fine abrasive paper like a 1200 grit wet and dry paper and a thorough degrease and clean using mild detergent or an alcohol wipe should be all that is needed to prepare the surface for paint.

The Box Section surface finish is the natural finish achieved during the pultrusion process which is smooth and has a low level of sheen. The Box Section does not, at this time, come in any other finish.

Generally, the pultrusions are used ‘as-is’ and don’t require painting. If you really do need/want to paint the pultrusions then a light key with a fine abrasive paper like a 1200 grit wet and dry paper and a thorough degrease and clean using mild detergent or an alcohol wipe should be all that is needed to prepare the surface for paint.

No these pultrusions are not magnetic.

No, this pultrusion is manufactured from standard modulus fibres.

We do not currently offer a custom cutting service for our tubes and pultrusions. However, they are able to be cut DIY relatively easily as you can see from our tutorial video: How to Cut Carbon Fibre Sheet, Tube and Parts

Unfortunately it is not possible to cut a usable thread into carbon fibre composites. The nature of the material is such that the teeth on a thread would not be able to take any load and would break up either during thread turning or the first attempt at using the thread.

Where it is desirable to have a threaded method of attaching the tube or rod, it is commonplace to fabricate and then bond an aluminium insert into the tube or over the rod end which can then have a thread cut into it.

In simple terms these carbon rods would work with linear bearings in that fashion. The only concern is long term durability as the carbon surface is not quite as hard as aluminium and thus would likely wear quicker in many circumstances. For low usage or low load situations this may well not be a limiting factor.

The HDT of these pultrusions is 80 °C.

Yes absolutely! If done carefully, a hacksaw can be used to cut a pultrusion. Take a look at this VIDEO where we show various methods of cutting carbon fibre.

I want to make a modular 12 metre long rod by joining 6 sections of your 2 metre square rod. At each of the 5 joints I propose strengthening and connecting the 2 metre sections by inserting 1 metre sections. Will this work ?

Due to the tight manufacturing tolerances, the box sections do not slide into each other. With a little sanding the smaller box section can be made to slide into the larger one.

In terms of using the sanded down sections as box joiners, there is no reason why you could not do this. If you wanted to bond the smaller box section in to place, then we would recommend our VM100 Black 10min Methacrylate Adhesive as it is a very strong adhesive for carbon to carbon bonding.