Automotive
Carbon Fiber: Refiguring the supply/demand equation
CW editor-in-chief Jeff Sloan returns from Carbon Fiber 2015 in Knoxville TN, US, with news that carbon fiber demand will outstrip supply by 2020, prompting expansion in the 2018-2019 timeframe that could include sources in China.
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New Year’s resolutions
CW contributing writer and composites industry consultant Dale Brosius, who presently serves as chief commercialization officer for the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI, Knoxville, TN, US), imagines an automotive world where composites are king, then — more realistically — calls on the industry to resolve to make it capable of worthy service.
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Turnkey manufacturing systems: Part-per-minute thermoplastic composites
Pinette Emidecau Industries’ (PEI, Chalon-sur-Saône, France) leads a consortium of providers that are collaborating on the Quilted Stratum Process (QSP), a means to accelerate thermoplastic composites processing in the auto industry.
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Turnkey manufacturing systems: Aiming for automotive-industry volume production
Fives Cincinnati (Hebron, KY, US) has announced an integrated manufacturing system for automotive composites comprising two automated manufacturing cells.
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Turnkey manufacturing systems: Simplifying automated HP-RTM
Having offered turnkey systems for composites since the 1990s for sheet molding compound (SMC), long fiber thermoplastic (LFT) and glass mat thermoplastic (GMT), Dieffenbacher (Eppingen, Germany) now has automated systems for high-pressure resin transfer molding (HP-RTM).
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Turnkey manufacturing systems: Materials, markets and maturation
Automated production cells promise affordability and less risk in scaling up composites production, but are they really the path forward?
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CW Ideas in Action
Ideas are just ideas until someone does the hard work of putting them into action and seeing results. CW's editors, therefore, inaugurate an annual review of Ideas in Action, celebrating a handful of hot concepts that could make those who conceived them "household names."
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For carbon fiber, the future certainly looks bright
ÂÌñÏ×ÆÞ's annual Carbon Fiber conference last week included an upbeat outlook for the supply and demand of carbon fiber, with particularly strong growth expected in automotive, pressure vessels and energy development.
Read MoreFord to invest $4.5 billion in vehicle electrification
The investment, to be made by 2020, will include the addition of 13 new electrified vehicles and a more social sciences-based approach to vehicle design and development.
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Green resins: Closer to maturity
As more players approach the market, R&D expands, but overall market growth in the composites arena is still slow but steady.
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