Structural composites company Carbon ThreeSixty has installed an in-house tailored fiber placement (TFP) cell which it says can process complex composite products three times quicker than traditional methods and reduce waste by up to 90%. According to the company, using TFP makes it easier to position fibers onto a variety of backing materials in the orientations required and secure in place with a thermoplastic polymer fiber. These bespoke preforms are then placed into resin transfer molding (RTM) closed molds, impregnated with resin and cured. Carbon ThreeSixty says that it can produce up to 100 metric tonnes of composite preforms per year.
‘The TFP cell enables the production scale-up of our defence wheel products, whilst significantly contributing to ongoing R&D activity with clients in other sectors,’ said Ed Allnutt, MD. Such challenging structures are inherently complex, and for true weight, stiffness and strength optimisation the reinforcing fibers must be placed to run in specific orientations, so for us TFP was the obvious solution.’
This story uses material from Carbon ThreeSixty, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
