When you think golf clubs, you think Lamborghini, right? Wait, wait! When you think super cars, you think Callaway Golf.
OK, hold on a sec.
It might seem weird at first blush that Callaway and Lamborghini announced a research partnership last week at the Paris Auto Show. But the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. In both the golf and automotive worlds, composite technology is all the rage, and the goal is the same — to make the strongest, lightest, and most easily shaped material possible.
The first product to emerge from the partnership is a material that the companies have dubbed Forged Composite. Rather than standard carbon-fiber composites, which use woven sheets of carbon impregnated with resin, Forged Composite uses a paste of carbon and resin that can then be shaped and molded. That means it’s easier to make complicated shapes, and the material has the same strength in every direction.
Lamborghini put the material to work in its Sesto Elemento concept car at the Paris Auto Show. Using Forged Composite in the monocoque and suspension arms, Lamborghini cut the car’s weight to just 2,200 pounds — 1,100 lighter than a standard Gallardo.
For Callaway, the first product with the new carbon will be its Diablo Octane driver. The company says it can forge the material to within one-thousandth of an inch, allowing club designers to put weight precisely when they want it. The result: A claimed average distance increase of 8 yards over the titanium Diablo Edge driver the company released last year. That’s a huge leap year over year, and Callaway is understandably excited about the material’s future applications.
According to Alan Hocknell, Callaway’s senior VP of R&D, “Forged Composite provides us with the ability to engineer performance enhancements like never before, and we’ve only just begun to tap the potential of this material.”
Read More http://www.wired.com/playbook/2010/10/callaway-lamborghini-carbon/#ixzz13avXirjc
