Composites Need White Knights
“I don’t care what application it is, but someone in a company has to be the white knight and say they want composites to work.” So says Brian Spencer, president of Spencer Composites Corporation. That mindset has worked for his business, and he hopes it will spread across the entire industry.
Spencer Composites Corporation is a family-owned firm hired by other companies to develop a manufacturing process or a product involving composites. But despite the company’s focus on a variety of technologies, they’re having as difficult a time as any manufacturer in selling customers on composites.
“It seems like we’re getting closer to wider acceptance, but then again I’ve been saying that for 10 years,” says Spencer’s President Brian Spencer. He finds this particularly frustrating considering the company has developed products such as drilling risers for oil platforms, which have been working successfully for the past decade. Spencer says this meets what he notices as people’s biggest concerns about composites: who is using it, how long they’ve been using it, and monitoring its health. Yet despite this, people often maintain their old ways. “People stick with steel because they understand it even if it costs more,” he says.
According to Spencer, the material properties are continuing to expand in strength ranges. “The stiffness is increasing and the temperature ranges are getting better, and those kinds of things don’t change in aluminum or steel,” he notes. The company has also addressed concerns about impact tolerance by taking a pressure vessel which took an impact of 1,300 pounds and swinging it on a pendulum of 13 feet. “Even though composites are more impact-sensitive than metal, that was a big impact, and it held up,” says Spencer.
And ever the optimist, Spencer and his company continue to explore new opportunities. They are working on energy-related applications such as hydrogen technology as well as transport of natural gas, crude oil and cryogenics. “Composites are getting better all the time,” says Spencer. But more white knights need to ride so the industry gets better too.
