Composite Products Worth Seeing

Today is April Fool’s Day. While we hope you haven’t fallen victim to any dastardly pranks, these companies aren’t fooling around as they introduce new products:

ITW Devcon’s newest product Tru-Bond

The name’s Bond…Tru-Bond. At least, that’s the name of ITW Devcon’s newest product. Tru-Bond Dual Cure Adhesives are designed to cure to a hard, scratch-resistant surface with UV light, visible light, heat, or combinations of light and heat. The company says the adhesives overcome oxygen inhibition barriers to allow curing with low-cost, low-intensity black lights rated as low as 15 watts. These adhesives are meant to produce thick, wrinkle-free surfaces because their depth of cure is greater than most UV-cured coatings. They are targeted for producing protective, decorative, and dome coatings as well as for potting, wire tacking, and tamper proofing applications.

Dantec Dynamics seeks sheer success with its Q-800 Laser Shearography System, a portable measuring solution that can detect defects including delaminations, disbonds, kissing bonds, wrinkling/waving and impact damage with no surface preparation. The turn-key optical system is non-contact and full-field and will work on such materials as fiber reinforced plastics, laminates, honeycomb, foam, wood, and metal. The highly sensitive interferometric technique will measure microscopic surface deformations caused by internal flaws when a small loading is applied to the object. This can be done using thermal, pressure, vibration or mechanical excitation. Typical inspection times are 10 to 30 seconds.

Getting to the core of wind turbine weight issues, WebCore Technologies LLC developed TYCOR W

Getting to the core of wind turbine weight issues, WebCore Technologies LLC developed TYCOR W as a high performance alternative to balsa and foam cores to help blade designers and fabricators reduce cost and weight for utility scale turbine blade production. Produced under ISO 9001 quality standards, the company says the engineered fiber reinforced composite core saves an average of 0.5 pounds per square foot and reduces resin usage by 0.2 pounds per square foot when compared to one-inch thick balsa. WebCore also says the product’s larger sheet size reduces the number of core segments necessary to load large turbine blade molds resulting in fewer core joints, faster fabrication and enhanced core fit at adjoining segments.

Need a cure for your epoxy blues? Dow Automotive Systems may have the answer with SYNEXA, a solution for ultra fast curing epoxy composites. The company says these composites can save up to 40 percent in weight when compared to steel, and currently enable cycle times as low as 10 minutes, and with a future target of less than five minutes. SYNEXA epoxy composite solutions are compatible with glass and carbon fiber reinforcement, and are suitable for structural applications including bonnets, roofs and structural body-in-white parts. Dow is also targeting SYNEXA carbon fiber reinforced epoxy systems in the passenger car industry. For the introduction of epoxy carbon fiber reinforced structural parts in this sector, the company seeks to curing times to less than five minutes.