Sourcing Dyneema / Cuben fiber material

You can buy full UHMWPE fabrics from China.  I bought some from alexiexpress. Finding Dyneema or Spectra brand fabrics is a bit harder, and MUCH more expensive. Often you have to buy in bulk, and even if not, again, it tends to be rather expensive.  The US, and probably other, Military has been buying this stuff up like it’s going out of style.

Cascade Craftworks sells a pack fabric that is not your typical Dyneema ripstop.  It has much more dyneema in it, but blended with some polyester so they could bond a mylar, PET type film to it:

http://www.cascadecraftworks.com/shop/x-pac-d40-dyneema-ripstop-half-yard-length-white

I’ll just quickly mention that working with full Dyneema, Spectra, and UHMWPE fabric in general, requires specialized techniques, as the fibers are very slippery and come loose from the weave or knit easier than most.

I have been working on a pack made partially from it, and if i could do things over, i probably would have spent the extra money and gone with the fabric i linked above.  Both easier, and that stuff should be near bombproof for the weight.

Thanks Justin! I saw that Cascade Craftworks has a number of good options, I like the look of the one you linked. For not being full Dyneema, it still ain’t cheap!

Justin, or anybody, did you have success ordering fabrics from aliexpress?

I looked at the stuff at aliexpress and the lightest weight I found was 80g/m…which equates to about 2.3oz/yd

I think that what aliexpress is selling is much more aligned with kevlar and carbon fiber than with cuben fiber.

Edit…just looked again and it’s definitely a fiberglass/kevlar/carbon fiber alternative.

Edit2…finding some really interesting stuff:

.3oz/yd carbon fiber veil (potential noseeum replacement?) — http://www.aliexpress.com/item/carbon-fiber-veil-carbon-fiber-surface-mat-carbon-fiber-tissue-10GSM-100m-roll/32346541127.html

.7oz waterproof kite fabric — http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-Taffeta-10D-490-510T-23gsm-58-60-Nylon-Ripstop-Waterproof-fabric-cloth-For-RC/32294137473.html

Some really light fiberglass cloth (could turn them into UL pot lids or pack frames with some epoxy):

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/30gsm-1oz-Glass-Fiber-Cloth-alkali-free-Fiberglass-chopped-strand-mat/32622464583.html

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-E-class-24gsm-Glass-fiber-Tear-Resistant-Plain-Woven-Fiberglass-Fabric-Cut-resistant-Reinforce/32653946711.html

…I have no plans to be a pioneer here but it was fun to look for this stuff.

Yes Tyler, i ordered the below, or something very similar to the below awhile back and received it fairly quickly (about a couple weeks).

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-200Denier-Fiber-80g-m2-Tear-Resistant-Plain-UHMWPE-Woven-Fabric-Raw-White-Cut-resistant/32260352447.html?spm=2114.30010308.3.2.cAVNjT&ws_ab_test=searchweb201556_10,searchweb201602_1_10037_10017_507_10032_401_10040,searchweb201603_6&btsid=b0746532-a443-4fc2-80d8-ea939cb78cbc

Like i said though, it needs special techniques to stabilize it, and i’m by no means an expert or well experienced in this area.

What i did when making my pack, was take the above fabric, and i tried to bond it with some 1.1 silpoly PU4000 on the PU side, then i sewed around the perimeter and then sewed an X through both layers.  While the adhesive i got said it was good for plastics like polypropylene, it did not really bond the UHMWPE fabric and silpoly together well.

I don’t know if that would be enough to stabilize it.  I almost wonder about applying a very thin layer of specialized, flexible epoxy to one side of the fabric, as these companies regularly use these fabrics in combo with epoxies.  (course it would make it stiff, but it’s better than having the threads unravel and the fabric eventually come apart).

Tyler, I can also vouch for the D40 fabric that Cascade Craftworks sells.  I’ve used and abused a couple backpacks made with it over the last couple of years and they’ve held up extremely well.  And as someone who buys it wholesale from Dimension-Polyant, I can tell you that Nathan at Cascade is giving DIYers a great deal on those fabrics – both the D40 and the other Xpac variants.

I did not deal with these guys nor did I have any experience with sewing such fabric but they seem to have the Spectra fabric that was used by some pack makers. http://www.sollercomposites.com/composites/compositespectra.html

Food for thoughts…

And as mentioned, very expensive.  In this case, 99 dollars a yard.

Ripstopbytheroll.com has 210D DyneemaX, looks like the stuff my Dyneema pack was made out of.  I don’t know squat about these fabrics, just going by the name.  Also has several weights of Cuben fiber, looks like the stuff Zpacks works with.  Not what you are looking for?

The recent acquisition of Cube Tech by Dyneema and the subsequent name change has bent my brain, and I don’t know what anything is.

If I was serious about finding a couple yards, I would contact CiloGear or HMG and see if they would sell some of their Cuben/Dyneema face hybrid stock. Your looking at $100/yd easily.

Ryan

I’m thinking about making some gear from woven Spectra. In what way does the fabric need to be stabilized? Is it that the cut seams will unravel?

This looks like a very good place to start searching on AliExpress for UHMWPE and other tent or pack fabric:

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1711818?spm=2114.10010108.100005.4.yIQkvR

That 80gsm stuff is interesting. $28.50/sq.m. is acceptable for the low quantity you need for a pack.  2.35osy is good, but it lacks a water proof coating.  A pack liner made from Rockywoods’ 0.7osy waterproof nylon would put you in the same weight range as the hybrid Cuben/poly from Zpacks, but be much more abrasion resistant.

I think the stabilization concern is about unraveling at the edges because there’s no coating to old it together, and the fiber is very low friction.  All the edges on my Ursack are folded in to the seams.  The weave is pretty tight, so I don’t think bias stretch will be an issue.

Working with the stuff, you might need to run a stitch on either side of any pattern line before cutting, and leave extra wide hems so you can fold the edges under, like a French seam.

It appears there’s a bullet proof product akin to Cuben Fiber – a non-woven laminate.  I’ve seen descriptions of the laminate as either polyurethane (which I think is what’s used in Cuben) or thermoplastic.  Casually described as water resistant, so who knows.

Here’s an eBay listing.  This is the lightest I’ve seen, 3.9osy.  Expensive, but still reasonable for a pack.

Also, a 200D, 1.75osy Kevlar Aramid weave. I think it’s intended for epoxy laminates – any one have any idea how it would handle being sewn?

“Also, a 200D, 1.75osy Kevlar Aramid weave. I think it’s intended for epoxy laminates – any one have any idea how it would handle being sewn?”

Skip it for sewing. Depending on what you get, some can be less strong than others. They embed it in other fabrics for shrapnel vests, bulletproof vests (with plates.) Abrasion breakage certainly happens, though. I build canoes, so, I treat it rather gently. Even then I sometimes have to polish off stray fibers from the surface with 2500grit carbide paper. Mostly, it is an “open weave” using bare fibers (or treated to accept epoxy.) It is fairly coarse weaving and does not hold a stitch well near edges.

My limited experience sewing pure UHMWPE fabrics has been similar to some of the others. I found the fabric somewhat stiff and the yarns are very prone to slipping apart at edges and seams. As an experiment, I impregnated a small panel of UHMWPE fabric with PU by laying it up like a composite and curing it under a lot of pressure with foam facesheets in a screwpress. Under pressure, the foam forced the LDPE peel-ply film into the crevices in the UHMWPE weave, driving out excess PU. I got a very thin, flat, flexible sheet that felt a bit like some of the DP laminates. I wanted to make seams by a combination of sewing and bonding, but my sewing machine couldn’t sew through it. For a pack material, you’d want to contact specialty PU resin suppliers and find one that will be resistant to abrasion, hydrolysis, and UV damage.