Development of equipment to produce semifinished recyclable off axis fibre reinforced thermoplastic material

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This project aims to develop equipment to continuously produce semi-finished recyclable offaxis hermoplastic laminate with variable fibre orientations at a rate suitable for mass market production. The production of continuous tape with fibre reinforcement at varying angles is innovative and a significant improvement over the current technique that utilises a manual lay up. This innovation will allow thermoplastic materials to replace steel in structural applications where production volumes are too high for current manufacturing methods of thermoplastics, as the proposed machine can produce 225m2/h, which compares very favourably to the current state of the art. Laboratory studies indicate that the mass of the component will be reduced by more than 50% while maintaining and in some cases improving material mechanical properties.The increase in production rates which the proposed equipment provides not only opens up the mass production markets but also considerably brings down the price of manufacture compared with current methods. With such high production volumes the processing costs will be as little as 30p per m2 of semi-finished material compared with £1.05 for the equivalent product made from steel. The proposed thermoplastic polymer has excellent material properties such as high impact strength, environmental resistance, re-formability, recyclability and the capability of being used in stealth applications.The key objectives of this project are to develop equipment that will produce components for the automotive and the aerospace sector on a truly industrial scale with reduced production time, reduced cost and with the added benefit of superior strength to weight ratio. End products will have lower fuel consumption and reduce the carbon footprint for end users be it motorist or airliners. A further objective is to avoid the dependency on metal for the production of such components and replace it with the output from this machine.