GH Craft, a division of Adeka, a maker of chemicals and food ingredients, and Teijin's composite structural design, development and evaluation business, announced that it has jointly developed a new Fiber-to-Composite (FtoC) molding process that can be prepared in an open mold Fiber Reinforced Composite (FRP) Laminate.
The FtoC molding process automates the resin impregnation, curing and lamination processes while achieving a highly oriented fiber arrangement. A special fast-curing epoxy developed by Adeka can be used under the conditions of the IR radiation molding process developed by GH Craft Fast curing by tens of seconds without large curing equipment such as curing furnace, pressure die and other equipment, simply lamination in an open mold to complete.
Compared with the traditional composite manufacturing process, the fiber waste is greatly reduced because the FtoC molding process omits the intermediate process by directly molding the fibers onto the composite.Furthermore, the process can significantly increase the glass fiber elongation and orientation Compared with GFRP prepared by traditional resin transfer molding (RTM), the properties of fiber composite (GFRP) increase flexural strength by 100%, tensile strength by 40% and interlaminar shear strength by 75%.
In the future, Adeka will develop a series of specialty resins for the FtoC molding process, and GH Craft will also develop the practical application of this process. Both will verify the effectiveness of the FtoC molding process through the production of actual products. In addition, both parties have the common goal of molding FtoC The process was set up as the de facto standard for composite production and created a new market for composite materials.
FRP is made of unidirectional fibers impregnated with matrix resin with certain degree of orientation and then heated and molded. Conventional thermosetting resin molding processes such as autoclave and RTM have the advantages of long manufacturing cycle time and high production cost and require equipment such as curing furnace and pressure die Large-scale production of large parts, and a large amount of fiber waste due to the intermediate trimming steps, In addition, the conventional thermosetting resin molding process distorts the fiber in the matrix resin and loses its high orientation, making it difficult to obtain high-strength FRP.