Karl Mayer Technische Textilien GmbH successfully showcased high-tech machines for the composites sector at the JEC composites show held in March in Paris.
Jochen Schmidt, Managing Director of Karl Mayer Technische Textilien, says, “The mood was upbeat, the number of visitors was high, and I had many in-depth, technical conversations with existing customers and also with people expressing a new interest.”
Many technical discussions were held with partners from Europe and the U.S., as well as India and China, which helped to contribute to the successful outcome. The discussions were related to specific projects, plans and trends.
According to Schmidt, a general trend away from simple lightweight construction technology towards components having integrated functions could be detected. The costs of increasing performance by using fiber-reinforced composite materials, especially when using carbon, are only justified for the most demanding applications. The Managing Director and his team had many conversations with suppliers to niche markets on the possibilities offered by the COP MAX 5. This multiaxial warp knitting machine for processing carbon scores points mainly because of its unbeatable productivity and excellent product quality.
Meanwhile, the glass composites sector, with its competitive raw materials prices, continues to gain momentum. The driver of demand continues to be the wind turbine sector, and increasingly industrial applications as well. A great deal of interest was also shown in the COP MAX 4, an efficient multiaxial warp knitting machine for processing glass.
Dr. Jürgen Trötzsch, Section Head of New Technologies at Karl Mayer Technische Textilien, was pleased to report that the sector is increasingly focusing on the topic of thermoplastic materials. He and his team have developed a line for producing thermoplastic UD tapes. They will launch this new innovation at ITMA 2019, but they had already started to arouse people’s curiosity about it at JEC. “This line was the topic of many conversations. Some visitors came to gather information, while others had specific queries about the machinery, but they were all impressed by the quality of our tapes,” says Dr. Trötzsch. This new line is the result of many years of expertise gained by the company in spreading technology. It guarantees a unique, homogeneous distribution of uniform, straight fibers, and thus delivers maximum potential for the lightweight engineering sector.