Features & Benefits
- Outstanding mechanical strength
- Extremely low weight compared to legacy metals
- Good vibrational damping
- Low coefficient of thermal expansion
- Outstanding thermal stability & conductivity
- High performance at elevated temperatures
- Excellent fatigue resistance
- Excellent corrosion & chemical resistance
- Excellent stiffness & toughness
- High endurance & load-bearing capacity
- Superior peel & shear strength
- High versatility & compatibility
- Suitable for hot/wet service temperatures
- Suitable with most key manufacturing processes
- High design & fabrication flexibility
- Ideal for simple to highly complex components
- Suitable for large & extra-large components
- Reduces number of parts, joints & fasteners
- Reduces production time by a big margin
- Minimizes product life-cycle costs
- CMR-free & VOC-free variants
- Non-toxic & DNV-GL approved variants
For consistent high-quality output at excellent value
Epoxy Prepreg Systems
Fabricators are increasingly moving from hand-layup and vacuum bagging processes, to the more efficient Prepreg process. This easy to use, mess-free and waste-saving process empowers fabricators with much greater control over the end product. Epoxy Prepregs is a continuous process that uses epoxy systems to pre-impregnate a reinforcement fibre, which upon polymerization cross-link to form a 3-dimensional thermoset matrix. Polymerization of Prepregs involve an intermediate stage, called B-stage, where the system is semi-cured and partial cross-linking is achieved. These B-stage Prepregs can be stored easily and used when required, to achieve full polymerization. Prepregs can be designed to be anisotropic to provide a specific directional strength.
Prepreg has evolved from traditional solvent-based to solvent-free and hot-melt technologies. The low viscosity solvent-based systems are easy to handle and chemically B-staged. While solvent-free systems are user-friendly since low boiling VOCs are absent. The Hot-melt systems, which are solvent-free and physically B-staged, have long shelf-life even at ambient conditions. For all three technologies, the Prepreg systems portfolio offers from moderate to high Tg and shelf lives; Tooling Prepregs provide Tg up to 200°C, enabling high degree of resilience. Designed for a wide variety of reinforcements, these Prepregs can be customized for diverse applications.
Epoxy SMC Systems
SMC epoxy resin systems have similar primary properties and chemical characteristics to those in Prepreg systems. B-staging is involved here too. Unlike Prepregs, the process is discontinuous and the strength in SMC is isotropic since the reinforcement is randomly oriented. SMC resin systems with low processing viscosity enable addition of specific functional fillers and high fiber loading unlike the traditional systems based on unsaturated polyester resins. Cut from rolls, SMC charges through compression molding process, are used to fabricate very large structural components from intricrate to complex parts, including B-side geometry.
High volume production ability, excellent part reproducibility & repeatability, cost-effectiveness and reduced labor have made Prepreg and SMC systems widely used technologies in Composite applications in automotive, aerospace, infrastructure and sports & leisure industries, among others.
Features & Benefits*
- Very high impact and fatigue resistance
- High thickness uniformity, conformity & repeatability
- Excellent light-weighting benefits
- Delivers desirable strength and stability
- Faster curing and minimal waste
- High resistance to corrosion
- Bubble-free, smooth and uniform finish
- High flexural strength
- Low thermal expansion coefficient
- Easy to handle and control
* Not common to all systems within the portfolio