Can you drill holes in carbon fiber sheets?

2025-09-16 14:20:10

Can you drill holes in Carbon Fiber Sheets? The answer is of course yes. Carbon Fiber Sheets often require drilling holes before being fixed, especially for assembly purposes, which requires not only drilling but also joining. Carbon Fiber Sheets are brittle materials, and this applies to all other carbon fiber products. This can lead to questions about drilling holes and concerns about their impact on the sheet's performance. Here, we'll share some basic information about drilling holes in carbon Fiber Sheets.

Drilling holes in carbon fiber sheets is possible, but it's challenging. Carbon fiber sheets are made by layering carbon fiber prepreg, melting it at high temperatures, and then forming and curing it. If you don't master the drilling technique, delamination can easily occur.

Generally speaking, there are two potential issues: burrs and breakage. During drilling, the drill bit rotates at high speed, generating wear, heat, and matrix cutting forces. This can cause delamination and tearing in the sheet.

Common delamination and burr tearing in carbon fiber sheets occur because the rate of decrease in axial force during milling is slower than the rate of decrease in material strength. This means that during cutting, the carbon fiber material tears due to damage before the milling cutter even begins to penetrate. Therefore, careful attention should be paid to the milling cutter's feed rate to ensure that the drilling force is less than the critical cutting force that causes defects, thus reducing tearing at the hole exit. Furthermore, the sharpness of the milling cutter should be carefully considered to ensure optimal cutting force at the hole exit.

The overall strength of the carbon fiber sheet after drilling will be somewhat affected, but with sufficient drilling experience, overall strength should not be a significant issue. However, if drilling causes fractures or cracks in the sheet, performance will be affected.

Carbon fiber sheet machining workshops process carbon fiber products daily. To ensure the performance of carbon fiber sheets after drilling, two aspects can be considered. First, the high-speed milling cutter must be strong and have excellent wear resistance and thermal conductivity to avoid burrs at the hole locations. On the other hand, the experience of drilling technicians is to be able to master the feed rate and milling cutter speed of drilling holes in plates of different thicknesses, including the number of milling passes, so as to ensure that the performance of the carbon fiber plate remains excellent after drilling.