Making UD materials in the best possible ways guarantees a good Crossply product. It forms the basis of the successful products in ballistics, sails, airbags and all other area’s we are working in.
After the sale of the UD machine from our Pilot Plant, we had to build a machine that would fully support future developments. Because we were working on many products we decided to build a UD machine with even more possibilities than the previous version. This new machine has a working width of 600 millimeters. The spreader units, roller coater unit, kiss roller unit, unwinders and winder are made as separate units. By alternating the position of the units within the machine we can impregnate or coat the yarns in several ways. Making UD materials in the best possible ways guarantees a good Crossply product. It forms the basis of the successful products in ballistics, sails, airbags and all other area’s we are working in The resin can be applied at room temperature and at elevated temperatures up till 300 degrees Celsius. For thermoplastic resins we have the possibility to add an extruder with a slot die.
The heart of the machine is our patented main drive system. In the UD600 machine we have mounted three rollers which are individually driven by means of servomotors. In this manner we can compensate for the elongation of the yarns before they are joined with a carrier film or silicone coated paper.
Exchanging the rollers is easy and we have a number of rollers with different surface qualities such as chromium plating, fluor polymer coating and rubber coating. The rollers of the main drive system are also heated. This opens up the possibility to bond or impregnate the yarns by means of films or powders.
For drying, cross linking or B-staging of the UD laminate, we have three heated sections. Each section is equipped with a hot water unit and therefore the temperature profile can be chosen according to the resin’s quality. The creel from which the yarns run into the process is equipped with 500 positions. The spool holders are injection molded according to our own design and based on our experience with earlier built creels. The spool holders can take cardboard tubes from 75 till 94 millimeters. The brake force is generated from a central point and adjustable. For unwinding carbon and other wide products we install special rollers that keep the yarns as wide as possible during their travel to the UD600 machine.
The UD600 machine is available for our customers and prospects for product as well as process development. The machine offers the possibility to make Unidirectional prepregs for composite products as well as the base material for Crossply products.