Sept. 18, 2017
Photo caption: KONE UltraRope
Source: CompositesWorld | Author: Jeff Sloan
The agenda for CompositesWorld’s Carbon Fiber conference, Nov. 28-30 in Charleston, SC, US, has been updated to add three new presentations covering carbon fiber rope, tooling systems for out-of-autoclave (OOA) processing, and an update on development of low-cost precursors for carbon fiber manufacture.
Steve Gonzalez, director of major projects for the Americas at elevator manufacturer KONE will review his company’s development of UltraRope, a lightweight carbon fiber alternative that decreases the weight of elevator cables by 70% and is less susceptible to building sway, enabling elevators to double vertical travel distance to 1 km.
Chris Huskamp of Surface Generation Ltd. will describe how his company’s PtFS active thermal management system provides a closed loop mold temperature control system that can be used to eliminate thermal variations within a laminate in OOA processes.
Uday Vaidya, CTO at the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI), will describe the Carbon Fiber Technology Facility (CFTF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), which has pioneered the development of low-cost carbon fiber (LCCF) produced from a range of textile-grade precursors. IACMI is conducting a study to generate useful property data sets of this carbon fiber for its stakeholders in automotive, wind and compressed gas storage. Vaidya will cover the study and its results.
Carbon Fiber 2017 also features a tour on the morning of Nov. 28 of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner final assembly line in North Charleston, followed that afternoon by a pre-conference seminar by Chris Red of Composites Forecasts and Consulting LLC on the outlook for carbon fiber growth in energy and transportation applications.
Presented by CompositesWorld, Carbon Fiber 2017 is the preeminent conference on carbon fiber and the expanding role of this material in the composites industry. The conference offers cutting-edge information and access to industry experts in streamlining manufacturing costs, market outlooks and forecasting, and more. For more information about Carbon Fiber 2017, and to register, click here.
Carbon Fiber 2017 is sponsored by Boeing, Harper International, Toho Tenax America Inc., Cygnet Texkimp, Eisenmann, Izumi International, Kamitsu, A&P Technology and Abaris Training.