JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #100 - Special JEC Asia - October 2015 - 41

New T-die UD-prepreg machine: realizing wide range
of material design capability from thermoset to thermoplastic
Prepreg production with thermoplastic resins has been gaining a lot of
attention recently. Until now, the main
manufacturing methods were the beltpress as well as direct impregnation.
However, there are concerns about
high initial investments, running and
production costs, and specific requirements for productivity improvements.
As a result, based on these specifications and issues, Aiki Riotech Corporation has been developing a new
prepreg machine.
Starting in June 2010, said-machine
was developed for thermoset resins,
after numerous customer trials. When
it comes to the thermoplastic resin
market, designs began to be worked
on in 2013 by using the T-Die method

(hot-melt direct impregnation). The
project was developed jointly with
Gifu University, who contributed by
performing the evaluations of sample
prepregs.
The results of the evaluation revealed
that the T-Die method gave far better
impregnation results than the "resin
film stack method". That method
requires bigger areas for heating as well
as more time during impregnation.
Consequently, the size of the machine
would be bigger and thus presents
disadvantages such as a lack of operability, lesser productivity, etc. The
T-Die method, however, saves heating
space, uses less impregnation time
and observes better production rates.
Simultaneously, the T-Die method

Equipment
Winner: Aiki Riotech Corporation
( Japan)
Partner: Gifu University ( Japan)

dramatically reduces the raw material
costs.
The main benefits of this machine
are the following: initial investment
saving (up to 20-30%), high standard
impregnation ability, and it can be used
for both thermoset and thermoplastic
resins.

3D printing

3D printing technology based on light-curing technology

The 3D printing technology based on
light-curing resins presents a lot of

benefits. Low cost, high accuracy, as
well as easy forming are amongst the
main ones and enable it to be widely
applied. The mid-bodies of the resins
are prepared with a two-step method,
after which various photo-initiators,
auxiliaries, and fillers were added into
the material. The light-curing resin was
synthesized by sol-gel method. Thanks
to a large number of design schemes,
the best components and proportions
were determined. Similarly, both the
factor analysis method and orthogonal
experiment method were used to establish the best reaction conditions.
Best Composites' products main two
advantages over the competition are
quality and price. Advanced testing
showed that the resins have low
viscosity and relatively high transparency, perfectly meeting requirements.

Winner: Best Composites (China)

When it comes to cost, common
light-curing resin supported by various
big companies equally possess high
quality, but the price is much higher
and thus unavailable to more popular
markets. Possible applications include
the biomedical industry, for example
in surgery simulation, dentistry and
orthopaedics.

No100 October 2015 / jec

Special JEC Asia 2015

Light-curing resin systems have
demonstrated many advantages such
as non-contamination, non-toxicity,
no skin irritation and safety of production. Nowadays, "fused deposition
modeling rapid prototyping", "paper
laminated rapid prototyping", "selected
laser sintering rapid prototyping" and
"stereo lithography rapid prototyping"
are the major mature techniques. The
"Stereo lithography rapid prototyping" technique is currently the most
widely used one in the industry: it
consists in scanning the resin with a
computer-controlled UV-laser. At first,
the section is obtained in two-dimension, and then in a three-dimensional
substance thanks to "Serial Layer
Scanning".

composites magazine 41

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #100 - Special JEC Asia - October 2015