Kifaru Carbon Fiber ARK Frame

[maddmartagan]

I’ve been a Kifaru fanboy for over ten years now and listened to the podcast since Aaron was a cohost on Gritty Bowmen. I can’t remember what episode it was (I think there were multiple instances) but I know Aaron had basically made fun of Kuiu for using carbon fiber frames and marketing them like they were this new awesome technology. Aaron’s criticism was that carbon fiber has been around for decades and it was determined that it had a lot of negatives to it, which is why most companies did not use carbon fiber.

So now that Kifaru has moved to carbon fiber, does anyone know what the difference is? It seems that Aaron has always been a huge advocate of aluminum/carbon stays for the frame, and then out of no where they switched to full carbon fiber frame. Anyone know what has changed with carbon fiber in the last decade or so that makes it better than aluminum stays?


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[PathFinder]

The switch probably had a lot to do with labor...Assembling a CF frame made out of house is way easier than sewing their previous design together. They moved away from their skilled labor base in Denver and design changes were probably necessary as a result.
Composites are always evolving. Changing the kind of layup, cure, fiber, orientation, resin, etc can allow CF to take on desired attributes for the application.

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[maddmartagan]

The switch probably had a lot to do with labor...Assembling a CF frame made out of house is way easier than sewing their previous design together. They moved away from their skilled labor base in Denver and design changes were probably necessary as a result.
Composites are always evolving. Changing the kind of layup, cure, fiber, orientation, resin, etc can allow CF to take on desired attributes for the application.

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Ah yea both of those make complete sense.


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