Dieffenbacher at Composites Europe - Lightweight construction with fiber-reinforced plastics
At this year's Composites Europe to be held from 27 to 29 September 2011 in Stuttgart, Dieffenbacher will be focusing on innovative processes for manufacturing structural components and class-A outer body panels for the automotive industry. The plant manufacturer supplies presses and complete production lines for manufacturing fiber-reinforced plastic parts.
One main area is high-pressure RTM technology (HP-RTM). In cooperation with KraussMaffei, Dieffenbacher has developed a completely automated production line for the HP-RTM process, starting from preform manufacture and extending through to the pressing process and ancillary steps. This development makes series production of high-strength structural components and outer body panels possible using carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP). Previously, CFRP production involved a high level of manual labor, and was only used in aviation and spaceflight applications as well as in premium category automobiles.
The second main emphasis is the patented direct process for SMC (D-SMC). The Dieffenbacher technology of direct compounding permits continuous manufacture of SMC compounds, followed directly by processing into a component in the extrusion process. This means there is no need for the cost-intensive stages of wrapping, storage and logistics previously required for the semifinished SMC part. The maturing time used to take several days, and eliminating this delay represents an immense advantage of this one-stage process in terms of time and costs. As a result, the processing time between the raw materials and the finished part is reduced to a matter of minutes.
Dieffenbacher regards its technologies for processing fiber-reinforced plastics as an important milestone in lightweight construction concepts for use in the automotive industry and other industries besides.
Dieffenbacher GmbH will be exhibiting in Hall 4, Stand C36.
Contact for further information:
Roger Kautz
Marketing und Kommunikation
Tel.+49 72 62 65-224
roger.kautz(at)dieffenbacher.de