Thermoplastic filament winding with online-impregnation. Part A: process technology and operating efficiency

Process combinations of filament winding with online-impregnation of fibre bundles have previously been widely neglected, due to the technical difficulties of impregnating a large number of slender filaments with a highly viscous thermoplastic melt. An innovative impregnation technology, called impregnation wheel, has been developed which allows to produce high quality impregnated tapes or tows at considerable speeds. Due to the specific characteristics of the technology it offers itself to be adopted for a process combination with filament winding. The realised process technology is described in detail. To assess the operating profitability of the novel processing routine a simple cost comparison calculation with filament winding utilising preimpregnated tapes was conducted. Even though in the early stage of process development a number of values could only be roughly estimated, the required minimum impregnation speed for economic production of a glass fibre reinforced model component was deducted. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.