JEC World 2022, which will take place from 3-5 May in Paris, brings together experts from the entire composites industry value chain. Shaping thermoplastic fibre-composite preforms is among the many important steps in this process and ENGEL will thus showcase its organomelt process, wherein organic sheets and unidirectional tapes are functionalised in a single integrated step by over-moulding the preforms by injection moulding.
ENGEL
ENGEL bringing composites expertise to JEC World 2022
The main component of the production cell, which is producing demonstration components made of continuous fibre-reinforced polyamide (PA), will be a tie-bar-less ENGEL victory 200/50 injection moulding machine equipped with an ENGEL viper 12 linear robot for handling preforms and finished parts, and a double-sided, vertical ENGEL IR oven.
The composite blanks are heated and placed in the mould where they are formed and over-moulded with PA. Heating the prepregs is one of the process steps that drive the cycle time and quality in the processing of fibre-reinforced preforms with a thermoplastic matrix. ENGEL offers IR ovens from in-house development and production in various designs and places them in the production cell in the immediate vicinity of the mould. The ovens and the robots are fully integrated with the injection moulding machine’s CC300 control unit and can be centrally controlled via the machine’s display.
The production cell at JEC makes extensive use of the great efficiency potential of ENGEL's tie-bar-less technology for the organomelt process. The victory machine's biggest advantage in this application is its very fast hot handling. Barrier-free access to the mould area makes it possible to position the IR oven closer to the mould than is possible for injection moulding machines with tie-bars. And the robot can take the shortest path from the oven to the mould. In this way, even very thin preforms can be processed.
The thermoplastic composite preforms which ENGEL is processing live at the show are prepared in the ENGEL Center for Lightweight Composite Technologies in Austria.
Composite parts created using the ENGEL organomelt process combine a particularly light weight with excellent crash safety capabilities. This technology (already in series production in the automotive industry) is suitable for both organic sheets and unidirectional (UD) glass and/or carbon fibre-reinforced tapes with a thermoplastic matrix.
ENGEL will also present the production of vehicle door components. Three organic sheets with thicknesses between 0.6 and 2.5mm are heated and formed using IR radiation and given a high-quality visible surface using injection moulding in the same process step.