Making material gains

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Mike Richardson catches up with TenCate Advanced Composites and the progress made since the opening of its extended Langley Mill, Nottingham-based European Centre of Excellence for thermoset prepreg systems in May 2016.

TenCate Advanced Composites has been a market leader in the supply of prepreg materials for many years. Following a period of significant investment for the UK operation of the company, the 2016 opening of TenCate’s European Centre of Excellence for thermoset prepreg systems facility at Langley Mill, Nottingham signalled a significant milestone in its growth and commitment to serving the European markets with certified high quality, high-spec materials and solutions.

With its production of unidirectional tapes and woven-based prepreg composite materials for aerospace, space and satellite and communications markets, together with a doubling of capacity, TenCate’s new facility now houses a carbon-free manufacturing line dedicated to the manufacture of electrically-pure materials for the aerospace and defence sectors.

“We supply to the aerospace and industrial sectors,” begins TenCate Advanced Composites’ director of sales, Nick Tiffin. “Within this framework there are many sub-markets: for the aerospace sector, TenCate is a major producer of composite materials for space, launch and satellite markets, as well as being a market leader for electrically-transparent structures comprising nose radome and communication applications.

“With regard to the industrial sector, we have a highly regarded range of tooling prepreg systems that are manufactured globally. These systems support component applications as diverse as medical prosthetics through to bicycles. In addition, we offer many materials to tailored motorsport and high-end automotive applications.”

According to TenCate’s global director of product and market strategy, John Darlington, the investments made at Langley Mill are considerable and the company now boasts a number of prepreg lines that allows it to support larger and smaller programmes. The plant is fully-operational and complete with the installation of new freezers to house prepreg material. He also outlines the benefits of TenCate’s products for high volume production applications and the growing interest there has been from the market in this product.

“With these capabilities, we’re now moving from a phase of implementation to qualification,” he states. “The last 18 months has enabled us to enter a number of qualification programmes for these materials. We’re now at the point of talking to customers about their end requirements. Many of these customers are global operations looking to establish their manufacturing footprint. This in part is facilitating these global operations within their supply chains. They may wish to transfer production around the world and we need to grow to accommodate them in order to facilitate that.

“It’s all about establishing the correct material solution for the correct manufacturing process. We are very aware of the amount of industry development’s in productionisation and automation, be it AFP/ATL or press moulding or pick and place robotics, so we are developing materials for all of these automation processes. We have a spectrum of tailored resin systems from epoxies to polyimides that are suitable for many applications. Production automation covers a wide variety of technologies. TenCate has supported both thermoset and thermoplastic translation focused on meeting customer demands. Cost is always a consideration, and we feel that alternative technologies to prepreg will be utilised for the mass automotive market. We’ve been doing this for over 30 years so it seems strange to us to think that others are only now getting to grips with it. The industry will always adopt the technology that is right for it at that time. The aerospace sector was ready for this 25 years ago, whereas the automotive sector is just picking it up now.”

Fit for purpose?

I’m interested to know whether the industry needs to address the issue that prepreg material supplied into the aerospace sector is ‘over-specified’ and therefore too expensive for the automotive industry to really get enthused about?

“It’s more to do with the total cost within the supply chain and not purely down to the cost of the prepreg,” states Tiffin. “Carbon fibre materials are often blamed for being costly, but carbon fibre architecture plays a role in all this - whether you make fabrics, bi-axials or tapes, so the value can be in other areas. Processing is a big part of the total cost within the supply chain. Automotive components tend to be smaller structures in comparison to aerospace ones, which means more of them, so we have to look at final part cost - which is the key to acceptance.”

As one of an ever-diminishing band of independent suppliers to the UK industry, how hard is it to remain competitive against the big boys and are you feeling any pressure to acquire or be acquired?

“TenCate strives to remain competitive in the marketplace, offers distinct ranges of materials, technology and we have extremely good relationships with our supply chains - especially in the fibre markets,” Tiffin confirms. “We are an ‘independent’, but our relationships within our supply chain are excellent, and this allows us to be competitive.

“We have a global platform with some extremely desirable material technologies. We strive to be customer-focused and specialised in the markets where we can add value to our customers and their applications. The customer is central to everything we do and if we make them successful, then we become successful too. Having a global platform to support that and the materials technology differentiates us. Everyone will probably say this, but we feel that having that customer focus and intimacy is very important.”

Going for growth

In terms of the kinds of developments the UK composites industry can expect to see in the future, Tiffin points to the growth and popularity of industry tradeshows as one of the reasons for the massive expansion within this market.

“People are also thinking a lot more out of the box with novel technologies for rapid part manufacture to bring materials to new applications and sectors,” he concludes. “This is not a ‘one shoe fits all’ technology – different material solutions offer different advantages. At TenCate there is a very strong backbone in both thermoplastic and thermoset solutions, and we continue to invest in the growth of both of these material capabilities.

“We’re seeing a huge expansion into alternative technologies: dry fibre placement and RTM have become more prevalent beyond just boat manufacturing. Dry fibre placement is used in aircraft manufacturing, so it’s about establishing the most economical way of getting both a reinforcement and a matrix into a structure; that all clearly depends on the nature of the structure. The automotive market will bring its own challenges because it isn’t just about cost – it’s about throughput and whether you can produce parts at such a high volume. Autoclave technology will not be the route forward here! We will have to look at alternative technologies to meet these demands.”

TenCate Advanced Composites will be exhibiting at the JEC, hall 5A, stand V40, with a range of applications demonstrating the processability of its thermoset and thermoplastic materials for aerospace and industrial markets.

www.tencatecomposites.com

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TenCate

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