The Carbon fiber creel is a post development of the Glass roving creel. In that creel we noticed that flat yarns should be guided in a different manner, without eyelets. Van Wees has equipped the carbon fiber creel creel with these guidings and it shows good performance. In the accompanying photo it is shown how each yarn follows the groove in which it was placed from a larger groove. In this large groove, the yarn can follow its spooling pattern without twisting or falling over.
The spool holders are equipped with the Van Wees design spreaders that allow cardboard tubes with different sizes to be mounted. Standard is 75 till 94 millimeters, but also smaller tubes are possible, down to 50 millimeter. The spreader can be adjusted according to the operators wish in how it grips the cardboard tube. This accommodates easy doffing of the spools and especially the removal of the empty tube. Van Wees has already made thousands of spool holders for the ballistics industry where very large creels are used, with over 1000 positions per creel. Each row can be equipped with a hand wheel for the tensioning of that row. The springs that operate the brake belts are mounted on a rod over the entire length of the creel and the handwheel is fitted on that shaft. By rotating the hand wheel, the tension of the springs is released or increased, thereby influencing the yarn tension downwards or upwards. The Carbon creel can also be equipped with central adjustment for the entire creel by hand or a fully automated version with either row or central adjustment. We are most happy to explain in detail.
The modular method of building makes the configuration of the creel very flexible. The spool holders are mounted on a high pressure laminate (HPL). The HPL laminate is white for good visibility of the yarns. The color can be chosen different from white in case that is the preference. The way the yarns travel through the Creel can also be changed, if needed with exit of the yarns at the top of the creel.
As mentioned above, the Carbon creel is also suitable for glass fibers and rovings which are spooled on cardboard tubes. The configuration will be the same and all options are open to choose from.
Glass roving creel
As mentioned above, another van Wees design is the Glass roving Creel. This Creel also has rotating positions for tangential unwinding of glass roving. In most cases and up till this development, the majority of the glass rovings were unwound from the inside of the package. If the roving package is stationary this introduces a twist in the yarn, every circumference. It is clear that for a lot of applications, this twist is not a problem. However, for high performance laminates, UD tapes or Multi-axial laminates, the twist is not preferred or downright undesirable.
The specially designed spool holders on this creel can hold 25 kilogram packages. The package holders have a wide expanding range (160—175 millimeters) to compensate for the variation in core diameter that occurs in the roving packages. In this creel also, great care is taken to guide the fragile yarns through the creel. With the Glass roving Creel it is possible to make a product from yarn packages that are originally not even made for rotary unwinding.