Loading ...
Gordon Brown, President, Flexi-StiX LLC, on how his company is finding new niche markets for composites.
Gordon Brown is a veteran of the composites industry, having worked at Strongwell, Owens Corning and Hexcel. Now a consultant, he developed the process behind Flexi-StiX, an idea to take extruded PVC tubing and give it structural purposes. Though the product could be used in many potential markets, it is initially being targeted in the exercise sector as a workout tool.
Why did you focus on the exercise market?
When I was marketing director for Strongwell in the 1980s, we were approached by Universal Gym Equipment, a major manufacturer of athletic equipment. Through our discussions with them on composites, they became aware that bending a composite could stretch the fibers and resulted in resistance. They suggested that if we can make something with these properties safely, there’s a huge market for it. We came up with a product that was developed and marketed, but we took a pultruded shape, and ran it through an extruder and put a tight covering of thermoset rubber over it. That gave it a round shape, but there were concerns the fiberglass would splinter in people’s hands. They wanted something over the outside of the fiberglass to prevent that. The product and process was too expensive at the time, and only bent in two directions. So that project was abandoned.
How and why did you come back to that idea later on?
Even though I moved on to other opportunities, that idea never really left my mind. Five years ago, I saw a hollow piece of flexible PVC in a store one day, and I wondered what would happen if I put a pultruded piece of fiberglass down the center of that tube. In all of our thinking, no one ever thought to take an extruded thermoplastic tube and put fiberglass inside it. It was one of those a-ha moments. It ended up being an economical way to make a variable-resistant exercise device. It’s light weight, economical, and safer, and uses standard extruded thermoplastic which reins in any splintered material.
What questions do customers ask about the product?
I’ve had many discussions with people in the thermoplastic extrusion business. Most of them have a vague idea, but then when I say it’s a pultruded round shape, I have to explain what pultrusion is. There is no extruded thermoplastic with any continuous strands fiber such that you can make a reinforced extruded thermoplastic. All they know is thermoplastic resins. You have to explain the composite, and then you have to tell them that the modulus is such that under the same amount of force, carbon and glass will elongate less than thermoplastics, which also results in increased strength and rigidity.
How do you help them more fully understand composites?
I have to demonstrate the product for them. Most people don’t consider PVC pipes to be flexible, so I show them the process and put it in their hands. They bend the bar and are impressed with the bending stiffness. The variable resistance nature takes effect the more you bend it. You have to go back to basics with people, but they’re excited about learning.
Where else could the product be used?
This is great for exercise, but if you put a thicker piece of fiberglass inside, you can create a structural building component. For example, in temporary shelters, if you take a 20 foot piece of PVC tubing and you put a piece of fiberglass inside that’s maybe ¾-inch wide and ¼ inch thick, and you bend it into the ground, you can hang 200 pounds in the center of it and it’ll flex. If you bend one, and move 6 feet and bend another one, and you get a tarp that’s big enough to fit over the tubes, it looks like a dome structure offering a cost-effective way for basic shelter.
What key issues keep the composites industry from growing?
Any sort of progress takes a long time to make ground, even though many of us in the industry invest time to do things. It shouldn’t take 40 years of testing, materials development, educating engineers, and flight hours for aerospace companies to incorporate a majority of composites. I’ve been a member of the American Concrete Institute (ACI) committee for composites strengthening concrete. We just now have a complete set of specifications covering a broad range of composites for internal and external reinforcement of concrete. That took 15 years to finalize.
What areas have you seen growth potential for composites?
There’s no short answer to that. The best examples of composites usage occur when we take full advantage of the resin and the fiber, take it into the realm of structural and demand performance out of the composite. I will say that aerospace still has strong growth potential. We have a corps of design engineers who believe in composites. Whether it’s for the fuselage, carbon reinforced flaps, engine components or storage bins, it’s everywhere. When you put materials in a true performance wing, you’re sitting there and they flap back and forth, it’s noticeable.
What are industries slow to adopt composites?
Composites have had to answer the questions of each and every industry. There were no fiberglass boats at one point, and now there are many of them. A company called Gibbs and Cox published the first design guide for fiberglass boats, and they spent many years to develop data and give the industry the design information it took to make operations possible. However, we have to design processes and techniques specifically answering that industry. The golf industry could care less that the Dreamliner has the same materials, for example; you just have to answer their specific questions. Looking back, the industry would have been better off if we spent three times more on development. We would have gotten the job done 15 years earlier.
What was wrong with the way things were done?
The industry would decide on something to work on, complete it and go on to the next thing. Then we would get to the point where we work on two things at once. We could have reached this point faster by bringing more resources to bear at that particular time. However, companies are only willing to commit so much time and money on development. In retrospect, that’s the only way it could have been done faster.
How can the industry improve itself?
In terms of spec development, we’ve gotten faster in processing the paperwork that goes along. The electronic aspect has streamlined that, but the downside is there are fewer people working. People say we’ve been hearing this for years, but we’re at the point with composites where we have close to a complete set of design specs across an incredibly large marketplace. I happen to believe that we haven’t tapped an ultimate potential, but with all the data we have, if people don’t believe composites will meet their needs seeing something such as the Dreamliner, they have an aversion to technology. We need visionary leaders to generate data and make industries comfortable in using the products. To make composites move faster, you need to truly commit.
To subscribe to CM’s weekly Q&A, click here.
That’s a good post!