Large, Larger, Langzauner: 100 years of press technology setting composite industry standards
Happy Easter and a continued Ramadan Mubarak, dear Composites Lounge community.
This is the 10th Community Newsletter. What you can expect from it:
Langzauner celebrating 100 years in existence with "Rocket Fuel" on JEC World 2024
The full Interview is now released on large, larger, Langzauner GmbH and Alan Harper Composites Ltd. . Read the full transriptions at the end of this Newsletter.
The interview with?Alexander Wiesner?took place at their celebration event for?Langzauner GmbH's 100th anniversary, where we discussed the company's history, current projects, and future innovations in the composites industry.
Watch the full interview now, because it also covered Langzauner's presence at JEC World 2024 and their expectations from the event.
Particularly, the insights into record breaking presses that feed RTM and other infusion technologies with overly large components, exceeding even 10 metres are simply mindblowing.
Watch also some behind-the-scenes on Langzauner’s booth at JEC World 2024
See an organosheet with functionalized thermoplastics to optimize the mechanical strength of the finished parts.
You will also hear about an exciting cross-border project with the UK. These international funded projects to increase competitiveness of Europe are great business instruments to make composites and lightweight technologies more popular. This popularity will be helping the European continent to become CO2 neutral by 2050 as been ratified recently from the?European Commission.
Lately, I have personally co-signed the Corporate Leaders Groups organised letter to the European Commission. We request carbon emissions to be reduced by 90% in 2040.
See our letter, where companies like IKEA, Coca Cola and many more joined the initiative.
It was also a great opportunity to talk with the project management team of Langzaunder during JEC World 2024 in Paris.
Bernhard Hauer?explained the particularities of the composites industry when it comes to designing parts. The interview provided insights into Langzauner GmbH's achievements over the past 100 years, their current projects, and their plans for future events like the JEC World 2025 and JEC Forum DACH 2024.
Watch also our JEC Warm-Up Session Langzauner GmbH Outtake in #Replay here:
Want to listen to the full JEC World 2024 Warm-Up LinkedIn Live session on our Composites Lounge podcast? Then click here:
Thank you?Thomas Witzmann, MBA,CEO?and the leadership team for having?Composites Lounge?and?DER Social CEO?being part of your celebration party.
May the rocket fuel another 100 years.
See under 3 Minutes what Rocket Fuel actually is:
Watch the full video on our YouTube Podcast here:
Or listen to it on Spotify ify here:
Do you have innovative composites processes established? Which ones? Let us know in the comments!
At the end we have included the entire transcription for a full inclusive Experience and if you prefer reading over watching or listening to our content.
Alan Harper Composites Ltd. revisited
We have already reported extensively on Alan Harper’s reusable bags.
The interview is now also available as fully captioned version on our Youtube Podcast:
Or, if you prefer to listen to Audio Podcast, hop over straight from here to Spotify:
In addition, make sure to swipe through their latest case study "Notus"
to stay ahead of the sustainability game:
Again, at the end of our LinkedIn Newsletter we have included the transcription if you prefer reading the interview during JEC World 2024.
Gees Recycling re-invented the way composites are recycled: Hard Surfaces make its use now in bath and kitchen environments possible
We are nicely progressing with our video series. Next we will present you Giorgio Betteto from Gees Recycling
Watch our spoiler now here in LinkedIn:
Expect the full interview on composites recycling after the Easter break.
?#JECWorld #composites360ontour?#Recycling
Are you attending JEC Forum DACH in Stuttgart (Oct, 2024 in Germany) or JEC Forum Italy at Lake Como (2025) or any of these following events in 2024?
HANNOVER MESSE 2024
Techtextil 2024, Frankfurt / Main (Germany????)
ACHEMA 2024, Frankfurt / Main (Germany????)
ILA Berlin - Pioneering Aerospace 2024 (Germany????)
M2N Media GmbH Converting Summit 2024, Hamburg (Germany????)
International Composites Summit 2024 Milton Keynes (United Kingdom????)
InnoTrans 2024, Berlin (Germany????)
MEET4COMPOSITE | International Composite Show 2024 Istanbul (Türkiye ???? )
KOMPOZYT-EXPO? 2024 Krakow Poland ???? )
Semicon Europa 2024 Munich (Germany ????)
Then reach out to me via LinkedIn or contact me through email ([email protected]), if you have news on innovative lightweight technologies that drive sustainability. Composites Lounge would feature your news during #Composits360ontour , since we will be on all these events there personally, too.
Also Composites Lounge organizes now panel discussions at enduser events in collaboration with JEC Group and invite you to take your seat in one of the panels.
This will give you, your firm and your solutions visibility of an exorbitant scale and fantastic networking opportunities!
Book your slot for a free call with Ilkay ?zkisaoglu here: www.dersocialceo.com/bookings
Composites Lounge Channels and Collaboration tools
You can watch all our Composites Lounge podcasts also as videos here on our Youtube playlist:
领英推荐
Subscribe to the Composites Lounge Newsletter
Get to know the latest trends, technologies and innovationes in composites aka fibre reinforced polymers. Subscribe
Want to partner, work or sponsor an event with Composites Lounge?
Contact Ilkay ?zkisaoglu here: www.dersocialceo.com/bookings
Last, but not least, interested in LinkedIn Thought Leadership?
Subscribe to my German written monthly LinkedIn Thought Leadership Newsletter here. Click the picture to read the latest edition No. 22
Wishing everyone happy Easter and Ramadan mubarak!
Best regards,
(Editor)
AI Transcriptions
For a more inclusive experience we are adding the transcriptions of our longform video interviews. These transcriptions are AI generated and improved by the editor. We have taken care, but there may still be some ambiguities. Therefore, please contact the interview guests for any clarifying questions.
AI Transcription Langzauner at JEC World 2024 06. March 2024
00:00:00 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: So wonderful, good afternoon, dear LinkedIn community and Composites Lounge members. We are going strong on composite 360 on tour. And now I have with me Alexander Wiesner from Austria. Thank you Alexander, for being part of my show.
00:00:13 Alexander Wiesner: Hi Ilkay, hello community. Nice to have you here at our booth.
00:00:17 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: So you have met Alexander before on our LinkedIn live JEC World warm up sessions. And today, of course, we want to talk about the presses here on the side. And we have a big announcement because Langzauner has a celebration today. So what do you celebrate?
00:00:47 Alexander Wiesner: 100 years Langzauner. So we were born in 1924 and it's a big party here with our community, our customers.
00:00:54 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: So it's very impressive history. We've talked about the history of Langzauner before. Go back into the LinkedIn live, where he was explaining us that Langzauner started with the press industry, the wood industry, and now we are on composites. So what have been the groundbreaking milestones in that long history, Alexander.
00:01:15 Alexander Wiesner: I'd like to summarize it a bit in a nutshell. So it started in 1924. It was a very, very simple organization during that time. So the first thing was we had the contact with the wood and wood industry was the major driver, and that brought us in the 60s to a sandwich construction. It was a request in the ski industry to combine materials. And so the ski industry was one of the first touch points actually with composites. And so later on it was the aerospace industry coming, the automotive industry, as we can see here, some examples. And that was the groundbreaking actually event for us to develop our presses according to the needs. So today we are very, very innovative and have very good solutions in respect to accuracy and respect to energy efficiency. And this is what the market is, is asking, especially in these days.
00:02:09 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: Great story, great history, Alexander. But now we are at the JEC. How how do you find JEC this year, 2024?
00:02:16 Alexander Wiesner: It's pretty much a success story again. So last year was very much crowded. We had very good discussions and meetings. So in this year it seems there are still crowded areas and the quality of discussions still improved. That's my impression. So we are happy to discuss about automotive industry, about aerospace industry. And we have also lots of examples at our booth and products.
00:02:39 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: And that's actually my next and follow up question to you: what exactly are you showing here on your booth? I mean, it's difficult, of course, to put a press here. I saw your press at CTC in Stade (Germany) that has 1500 tons of force. It's incredible. I need to repeat that 1500 tons of force. But the parts they are pressing are, of course, overly large. They can be up to two meters or even more.
00:03:07 Alexander Wiesner: Even more. So there is basically no limits. So we are currently discussing parts ten meters long.
00:03:14 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: So you can cannot show a machine a press here. But what can you show?
00:03:18 Alexander Wiesner: We can show at least some reasonable sizes of products and applications. And for automotive we have one of the nice parts here. It's a front cover of a Porsche GT3 Wei?ach package with the optical features very, very intense carbon look, high quality. It's an RTM process behind built on our presses at one of our major customers.
00:03:43 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: So Porsche as a brand, of course, very fascinating. But I guess without diminishing the complexity of automotive parts, I think you have that under control, but has there been times where you say this was really a challenging part, something very challenging? I mean, extremely challenging.
00:04:04 Alexander Wiesner: Basically, you're right, so challenging is nearly everything to us, because our slogan is "your challenge is our project" and challenging means in terms of timelines. Sometimes, yes, we are capable to control that, but also from technical side requirements, building setup. And one of the project most challenging to us was for sure the, press delivery to the Institute, IWV in Leibnitz Institute in Kaiserslautern (Germany), because it was a specified a press with a very high level of requirements beyond state of the art, I would say, and very limited space. And this was the 2600 ton press that we developed and built for the IVW Leibniz Institute in Kaiserslautern, in combination with an infrared heating oven for thermoplastics working at 2600 ton press three by two meter capable to do GMT, LFT, SMC, RTM multifunctional. And finally we packed, Iwould say, it's the highest density of technology, I would say, compared to the room available. One of the nice products, and samples we did, it's like a functionalized thermoplastic material, which is an organosheet that we heat up in the infrared oven.
00:05:17 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: So there's the organosheet. But it's bended or is it just because it's on the wall?
00:05:22 Alexander Wiesner: It's on the wall. So it's flat actually. We heat it up at the infrared oven, and then we quickly transfer it to the press position. And in less than five seconds we have applied the full pressure. And the nice thing here is in addition with the injection unit, we are able in a one shot cycle to functionalized the organosheets. So the orange what you see it's a polymer that we inject. And with this technology it's very future promising we would be able and we'll be able to optimize the mechanical behaviors compared to the weight. So that means rips and stiffness increase and reinforcements are possible.
00:06:18 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: We changed the location, dear LinkedIn community. As you can see, I said, I want to be inside the team of Langzauner and we will speak to the Langzauner team in a moment. But before we do that, my last question to you is which projects and applications are the recent ones, Alexander, that you have right now in the hot press?
00:06:38 Alexander Wiesner: Yeah, actually on the press side, it's very impressive. It's a 2600 tonne press with a part size of ten by three meter. That means very, very large aerospace parts.
00:06:49 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: Wasn't that a secret?
00:06:50 Alexander Wiesner: It was a secret. But now it's out actually.
00:06:53 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: Today, dear Community, Composites Lounge and #Composite360ontour. We are getting all the secrets out, because we had yesterday already, some secrets revealed. Today is another one. It will be on the press today. So ten meter?
00:07:07 Alexander Wiesner: Ten meter, the part. So the press is even bigger. It's a 10.5 by 3.5m platen size with the 2600 tonne pressing force. And it's an RTM application for the aerospace industry. It's a part of a public funding to increase the competitiveness of the UK. And it's a consortium actually with the University of Sheffield, the AMRC Institute, and we were awarded with the contract to develop that press with some special functions in terms of parallelism. And that's currently the latest innovation we are driving. We're looking forward to bring that on the street.
00:07:41 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: The last time we spoke you mentioned that press is one of your core capabilities, but you have also, of course the automatization and the other supporting processes. Is in this one, you are only doing the press and the UK brings the other skills?
00:07:59 Alexander Wiesner: This in that case, the split package we take care about the press and automation will come in a separate package with some robot application and so on. But this brings me to the second innovation. We drive also in terms of thermoplastics, especially in the automotive industry, when we talk about battery housings, battery protection plates to protect the batteries against impact. So whatever. So it comes a lot in this direction of GMT, LFDT. And this means not only the press, but a fully integrated automated line with cycle times of 60 to 70seconds.
00:08:31 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: So dear community by the way, this is the Austrian flag. Don't mix it with Australia. Is that true that some people mistakenly fly to Austria instead of Australia?
00:08:45 Alexander Wiesner: I've never met that guy. Maybe a kangaroo or something like that.
00:08:49 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: So community, now we are here with the team of Langzauner. Maybe Alexander, if you just run through all these three gentlemen, just quickly.
00:08:58 Bernhard Hauer: My name is Bernhard. I am responsible for project management in our company and we are here at the booth with a big team. Waiting for the people to come. And we are very happy. There's a lot of people are passing by and visiting us on our booth and are very interested in our technologies, projects and so on. Stephan is in the project team as well. So we are a group of three guys managing, all the Langzauner projects. So from the first short handover from the sales team, we take over and provide a good service to the until the after sales take over. And there is another Stephan in this round. Andthe second Stephane is responsible for the production. So he is the production manager, making sure everything is done on time and on quality.
00:09:55 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: Very good. So project management, as I said, Bernhard is one of the very, very key tasks in composites development, because composites means if we go to the OEM, we have the draft, the prototype, the APQP cycle. So we have to do the whole cycle is are you overlooking the whole cycle from the beginning to the SOP?
00:10:19 Bernhard Hauer: Yes, exactly. That's what we are covering. And it's very important to understand the process requirements. Every customer has unique demands on quality and technology cycle time. And within the project we are optimizing processes and cycle times as I said, and with our experience and the open minded as we are, we're able to even develop a project further during the lifetime.
00:10:54 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: We are at the JEC World here, Bernhard, what's your expectation out of the JEC world 2024?
00:11:01 Bernhard Hauer: We expect new customers and it's very important for us to maintain the community, to make sure we have a lot of customers. We want to make sure it's not an one time meeting or an one time project. It's frequently there's more demands coming on. And we want to make sure that our existing customers are well deserved during that time. And we are very happy to welcome new ones. And it's always interesting and nice seeing new people and getting introduced to our technology, where we are coming from and how we are reacting. We are the expectation is to get our community bigger. And that's, I think the best possibility is the JEC in Paris.
00:11:54 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: And "community" is the right word. Please hand over the microphone back to Alexander. Alexander, we met at Salzburg (Austria) last time in your home country. This year it will be in Stuttgart. Will you be also displaying at JEC forum in Stuttgart?
00:12:08 Alexander Wiesner: Absolutely. I would say JEC is a very, very essential format for us and also the JEC Forum DACH. Very interesting. Looking forward to meet you there, absolutely.
00:12:17 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: I will be there for sure again. So community, now it's the time to finish our Langzauner interview. Alexander has prepared something for me and for us. What is it?
00:12:27 Alexander Wiesner: It's a 100 year celebration beer.
00:12:29 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: Okay, by the way it is coming to the close of work.
00:12:33 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: So shall we say Prost? Cheers and good health for your 100 years. Ex? Rocket fuel.
00:12:48 Alexander Wiesner: It's a rocket fuel.
00:12:49 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu: Community, it's called rocket fuel. How appropriate! Thank you, gentlemen so much. Thank you, Alexander. Thank you for the meeting. I wish you a great show the rest of the show and much success. See you again.
00:13:01 Alexander Wiesner: Thank you. See you.
00:13:02 Bernhard Hauer: Again.
00:13:03 Alexander Wiesner: Bye bye, Community.
AI Transcription Alan Harper at JEC World 2024 6. March 2024
00:00:00 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu, Composites Lounge: So wonderful. Good afternoon, Linkedin Community community and composites lounge members and experts out there. We are going strong on JEC World 2024. This is our afternoon session with Mr. Alan Harper, who just came out of Thailand yesterday night and stood on the booth already at 9 a.m. in the morning. Welcome to our show, Alan.
00:00:21 Alan Harper, Alan Harper Composites Ltd.: Thank you very much.
00:00:35 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu, Composites Lounge: So you you come from Thailand. No jetlag because you can sleep on the plane.
00:00:42 Alan Harper, Alan Harper Composites Ltd.: Sleep on the plane.
00:00:42 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu, Composites Lounge: So that's great. And we can start immediately off in a great way we can. Guys, I've met Alan. You have to know at ICS in Milton Keynes
00:00:55 Alan Harper, Alan Harper Composites Ltd.: in England.
00:00:56 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu, Composites Lounge: Because I was immediately attracted, because I never saw a UK gentleman with a hat. So Alan is the UK gentleman with the hat. And I asked him particularly to be on my #composites360ontour show, because the hat is one thing. He is a gentleman, it's the other thing. And the other thing is, of course, the topic of sustainability. And before we dive into sustainability in the composites reduction, we want to decrease your cost of production. That's our passion reducing costs of production. We want to introduce you also to André. André, please have a short introduction of yourself.
00:01:35 André Antunes, Alan Harper Composites Brasil: Hello, nice to meet you to all composites lounge followers. I'm glad to be here and to be invited to take part of this great show that's doing great for our industry, transferring knowledge and presenting great cases. I'm from Brazil. I distribute Alan Harper for Latin America and some other countries around the world. And it's been ten years of adventure. I think about 15,000m2 of silicone bag placed around our area. I think we're here just because we've one of the many cases of successes of Alan Harper composites. So thanks for bringing this innovation to our territory and making this, uh, an opportunity for us to make the world cleaner, nicer and more productive. So nice.
00:02:24 Alan Harper, Alan Harper Composites Ltd.: Thank you very much, André. So we're very happy with Andre's activity in South America, because he's made a big impression in the South America, especially Brazil and Argentina, Venezuela.
00:02:38 André Antunes, Alan Harper Composites Brasil: Colombia nowadays.
00:02:41 Alan Harper, Alan Harper Composites Ltd.: Anyway, so it's just not happening here in Europe, but it's also happening in the East and the West. So we're very happy to do that. Our main message is basically we have basically eradicated the consumable waste package for infusion. But that's not the only claim to fame here. We work with silicone membranes and using atmosphere to push the resin in. We have a vacuum process. So that's our claim to fame. And we've seen we've been amazed at this year, 2024, at the actual amount of interest. Specifically, we're quite in the backwater here right at the top.
00:03:23 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu, Composites Lounge: I just wanted to say over there is like the strip in Las Vegas. Yes. The big, big, big, big hotels and big brands. I appreciate all of them. No gaming here. We are a little, dear community, so that you have an idea, at hall 5 L 132 is your booth number. We're a bit away from that main strip, but I'm seeing here everywhere in the surrounding busy booths.
00:03:50 Alan Harper, Alan Harper Composites Ltd.: Yes, it demonstrates, actually, that people are looking us out, because you don't get passing traffic here. You get people who've actually come up to the stand because they read about it through your your portal, through our portal, through our presentations on the LinkedIn and on the social media. People are obviously reading about that and they make a beeline here. So we've been delighted in the last day and a half already of the amount of volume of business that we're actually seeing here. And we really feel this is a confidence in the message that now we're beginning to bring serious confirmation that we can save people money. And that's really what our business is, the huge savings in material costs, by using this process to make the parts.
00:04:35 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu, Composites Lounge: Dear community, we will run through, not only the product itself, which we will come to it. So more interesting for you guys, as always, is the application side, if I may, I would like to introduce also, Ian. Maybe you can introduce yourself and tell us about the success story in the UK.
00:04:53 ian Flavell, Tower Composites Ltd.: Yeah. Can do. This is a bit strange. Usually give me a mic. I want to sing.
00:04:58 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu, Composites Lounge: Feel free.
00:05:01 ian Flavell, Tower Composites Ltd.: I own a manufacturing company, in the UK. Now, I set my business up six years ago, and I set it up solely to use silicon bagging. In UK the mindset for silicon. Well, no one really wanted to use it. They're all stuck on RTM. What we've done as a business, as showing that it works on a daily basis and we produce automotive and building. People bringing people in and saying, look, this does work. Now we've got a customer that we've now sort of changed their mindset completely. They are turning around about ￡32 million a year, spending ￡1 million on tooling every year. And they've only ever used RTM, and now they've got rid of all RTM. In the last 12 months, they've taken five tonne of silicon from us, and that's changing the face of what people are doing. So for me, from a business, we have saved a fortune running forward on silicon membrane. And I think it's great that everyone's mindset is changing. And that's thanks to Alan, really, and what he's doing.
00:06:03 Alan Harper, Alan Harper Composites Ltd.: Thank you very much, Ian. That's very great. And thank you for supporting us. And we hope we look forward to keeping you supported throughout the next few years. I come back to André. Maybe you can explain to the people how it's transformed to the the Brazilian market or the South American market.
00:06:40 André Antunes, Alan Harper Composites Brasil: So basically, we were a producer of composites in Chile, and we use light RTM at that time, 2012, I believe, we bought Allen System for 16 square meter tools, which at that point he never done. And he thought we were a little bit crazy. But with his knowledge and teachings, we were more than able to make this a success story. And from that time we invested about $20,000. And right now, after two years producing, we saved $240,000. So that's about ten times return of investment, which I never seen much in many places. If you know something like that, I could put my money on you. But 20 times return of investment made me love the system and realize the potential of what we were doing. So I told Allen all the advantages and he brought me in. And since 2014, as I said, 15,000m2 is a proven technology. All the bus companies, tractor companies and truck companies in Brazil and Latin America are adopting or have adopted thousands of silicone tools. You don't need to be afraid. Will this work and will not work? If he said work, it works. So come over and talk to us, and you'll be sure to be saving thousands or hundreds of thousands, or maybe millions. That depends on you. I hope we continue to harvest great success.
00:08:05 Alan Harper, Alan Harper Composites Ltd.: Well, I expect to be here next year and the year after. Yes, God willing, inshallah. as they say. Some people say to me, how do you make sure if you have if how do you make sure that if you have a hole in your membrane, you can find it? But we have a very, very interesting system here. And I'd like to show that to you now. And we use a high voltage to spark through a hole. And if you haven't seen it before, you would think it's something from Tesla. It's amazing. So I will just show you that how we find a hole very quickly in a membrane. Will you find a hole? And if you have a hole in your bag? Normally we only look when we've just manufactured that because once it's manufactured, very seldom do we get a hole develop after in its production life, which could be 600 injections. But here we've actually destroyed this bag by making a hole in it under vacuum and that we couldn't use it. So to find that you how do you find it? And we're talking about a microscopic hole. So we use this what we call the vac stat. And we can spread across here a wand which has 35,000V on it. And underneath is a conducting surface. And we spread across. If we find the hole. Ah, there's the hole. So it's jumping. The spark jumps through a hole that I can't even see. How we can fill that hole with a repair silicone, which we call 153 and repair it in a few seconds. And we're in business now. So that's just one of the innovations that we brought to our industry. The main part of Reusables is the word they're reusables, and what we've come along to bring to the industry is a process which eliminates all consumables. Consumables. I mean, when you want to put resin through fibers, you have to help the resin spread out. And usually the infusion you use flow mesh. And at the end of that operation you will make this amount of waste on a mold this size. This is the actual physical waste that we took from this bag when we didn't use a reusable, this reusable machine. The membrane here will work 600 times, so 600 times of that is replaced by this. So how do we do that? The main thing is that it's self seals. There's a seal on the mold. And we can put it under vacuum and pull a vacuum very easily. We can also spread the resin around by introducing the resin. At one point, as you can see here. And we spread it around and we eliminate the flow mesh by introducing what we call morph runners. It's a flow field. You can probably see these lines. You can see the lines here. And they will actually open momentarily to let the resin in and spread over the fiber. The here of the fiber is carbon fiber, very high density carbon fiber and glass fiber. And the resin will not flow through it over a meter or two meters or whatever, only a few centimeters. And therefore we've put in here a flow aid inside the membrane, which we will which will operate. Aidan, if you could switch that one on. But Aidan's just switch that channel on. You can see the channel has just self formed to allow the resin to flow. And that's the resin flows across. We switch on the next one and it flows across and we switch on the next one. And by this way we can actually externally control the resin flow into the fiber without using consumable flow mesh, which means this is just eliminates all that waste, which is a no brainer for most people. But it's now the technology exists to remove all that consumable waste, and when it's finished, we can eliminate that. So there's no channels left on the molded part. That's what we call morph flow fields. That's an innovation that we've brought to the industry. Now just move to another spot on the stand where we actually going to show you that the process is not confined to glass fiber and actually carbon fiber. We can also be using flax and, and certain resins. Here we have a flax product made from a mold that we have on the stand here, that is being done by a small company in Cornwall in England called Tonic. And they use flax and they're using the same system to make this part. And it's been infused with resin, into the flax with a very good surface finish for internal automotive parts. And you can see here the mold which has a silicone mold, which basically follows the same shape as the part and was self seal on a complex flange here to seal down and allow the resin to enter in through the resin point. Some people say, how do you actually apply the silicone? Well, you can buy the silicone in two forms. One of them, the smallest way in which you can do it is you can take a cassette or the canister like this, which is the A and B silicone, and put it through a handheld machine like this we see on the stand here. And that will allow you that's about 500 USD. But if you've got much bigger parts to make, like a nacelle of a wind turbine blade, then you would use a different machine. Which I come and show you over here. So coming away from the smaller machine, which we call the micro top, we come to the Top Gear Silicon six, and this is a much higher output machine which will deliver to make several square meters in just an hour. This takes the two resins through a mixing head to a spray nozzle and has a very good flexibility to hold at a very an arm's length to spray the resin so we can actually spray over three metres away and still get the the silicone applied to the mold or close up by applying the an angle to the the spray tip. That's an air operated machine. No electricity entirely air operated machine. So that's how people use the silicone from the drum and put it into the silicone membranes. The silicone will cure in about ten minutes. We can make a membrane in the morning and in the afternoon, take it off and try it so we can see the whole operation in one day of, say, a 4 or 5 square metre mold. Thank you. In my short trip here to France from our place in Thailand, I simply want to leave one message and that is. This year, 2024. We say from Alan Harper Composites "Welcome to the future of Composites", because we are bringing you a much lower cost of available technology to change your resin and into molded parts for the composites industry.
00:14:59 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu, Composites Lounge: Thanks for the wrap-up, Alan. It was really nice to meet you and talk to you about your fantastic reusable bags here. I've seen also another saying "improve working conditions". Improve working conditions. And that's all about, because with composites we are in a reinforcement side, glass fiber textiles, we have resins. These are challenging sometimes working conditions anyway. And if someone can ease that working conditions that's of course some of our aims. Thank you very much one more time, Alan.
00:15:34 Alan Harper, Alan Harper Composites Ltd.: Thank you very much, lkay, for giving us the opportunity to bring this much more noble process to the composites industry.
00:15:41 Ilkay ?zkisaoglu, Composites Lounge: Thank you. Have a great show
00:15:44 Alan Harper, Alan Harper Composites Ltd.: Thank you very much. Ilkay, I appreciate it.
***End of Newsletter***
Composite Experte, Unternehmer, Vision?r | Wenn Du Dein Ziel kennst findest Du auch den richtigen Weg!
8 个月You are the supporter of the composites industry who brings experts together and discusses important topics in a goal-oriented manner. This creates added value for everyone who is involved Ilkay ?zkisaoglu
Powering Your Presence With LinkedIn? | Corporate Thought Leadership Coach to and Industry Ambassador of Technology, Innovation & Sustainable Composites Solutions
8 个月Consider also joining our group here on LinkedIn, it is FREE:?https://www.dhirubhai.net/groups/8908458/
If you are from the manufacturing industry consider subscribing to our newsletter, because we create content on applications across the board of various industries, including, but not limited to?#Aerospace,?#Automotive,?#MassTransit,?#SportingGoods,?#Household,?#Construction?#Infrastructure,?#MedicalTechnologie,?#Petrochemical?#Chemical?#PowerGeneration,?#OilandGas