Car and Driver: Here’s What Happens When You Crush Carbon Fiber with a Hydraulic Press [Video]

Carbon fiber’s tensile, torsional, and compressive strength is well-known. But aside from seeing how it performs in agency crash tests or during race-car shunts—in which it often explodes, as designed, into a multitude of shards in order to dissipate crash energy—it’s rare that one gets a clear visualization of how tough this composite material really is. Thankfully, there exists in this world a Finnish man with a hydraulic press and a willingness to use it in bizarre and delightful ways.

In the latest video posted to his weirdly popular “Hydraulic Press Channel” on YouTube, Lauri Vuohensilta places several different pieces of carbon fiber on his press, and the results perhaps aren’t what you’d expect.

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Check out the video below, which includes some fun slow-motion shots, and then expect to lose some productivity to time spent viewing Vuohensilta’s other clips of busting ball bearings, lithium-ion batteries, Pringles cans, clay figurines, and more:

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