Filament winding of carbon fiber

Important results from the project

Since the specific target is high volume production where the most important requirement is reduced costs for the components we want to start from the basic materials fiber and matrix. Our conclusion is that we have gained significantly increased knowledge about fiber winding with coarse carbon fiber via robot. It is possible to wind at a reasonably high speed and build preforms with high fiber content and tailored direction and quantity in different areas. Vehicle components, e.g. composite reinforcements in cold-formed or press-hardened components are an interesting application.

Expected long term effects

We have built up a preform at 900 grams of fiber per minute. The tool dimensions of 30x110 cm mean a lot of acceleration and deceleration, and that we have not reached the robot´s maximum feeding speed, but maximum 50%. The result is therefore very good. Overall, the layout is relatively cheap, both the production equipment and the tools, ie. low CAPEX to get started. If we get the fixation of fiber right and looting of the tool, then we believe that we also have a very low OPEX. We have had a very good dialogue in the project and have some hypotheses about the commercialization of the technology.

Approach and implementation

We chose the fiber "Zoltek Px35 Tow 50K", to maximize the amount of fiber per winding revolution. It minimizes the time for winding the preform and thus the production cost, and is a difficult fiber to wind. The robot was configured to be able to test different fiber angles and turning radii, as well as different distances to see how acceleration, maximum speed and deceleration affect. The challenge was the turnings spikes, as the fiber must be well-stretched, so that the different layers get in contact with each other. The compact fibers make it difficult for the spikes to penetrate the fiber.