Fraunhofer's Plastics Laser Welding Machine Helps Achieve Invisible Weld Seams

At this year's plastics trade show in Düsseldorf (October 27 to November 3, 2010) the Fraunhofer ILT is presenting the TransTWIST laser-based plastics welding machine at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft stand (E91) in Hall 3. In live demonstrations the researchers will show how two transparent joining partners made of plastic can be lap-welded using laser radiation. In conventional laser welding a suitable radiation absorber is normally applied to the underlying joining partner. This is time consuming and costly. Furthermore, the appearance of the component or weld is affected by the color of the radiation absorber.

In order to be able to weld transparent plastics without any seam marks, the researchers at the Fraunhofer ILT have developed a laser machine for welding plastics. In a lap joint configuration transparent polymers are welded without the addition of infrared absorbers. This eliminates the need for elaborate pretreatment, saving process time and costs, and represents a breakthrough in plastics laser welding. TransTWIST produces high-quality welds that meet all the usual requirements in terms of being free from weld marks and restricting the zone influenced by heat. TransTWIST shows a great potential for use in biomedical field, especially microfluidics, packaging industry and in design applications.

Deep-Freeze Packaging made from Renewable Resources

The German company Dettmer Verpackunger, i.e. DeLo, which is specialized in flexible packaging systems, has designed an innovative deep-freeze packaging for frozen potato products that is entirely made from a copolyester material stemming from renewable resources. The company has in fact chosen the Bio-Flex™ F2110 grade from the German material producer FKuR to produce the new packaging. This material is a blend based on poly(acid lactic) and does not contain any starch or starch derivatives. It provides the high mechanical properties required for deep-frozen applications such as high impact resistance and dart drop strength at low temperature. Furthermore it complies with the EN 13432 standard. This new deep-freeze bio-based packaging has been chosen by the American company Mc Cain for its “Bio Harvest” products line.

MIT Study Recognises Importance of Natural Gas as Bridge to Future

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has completed a two year study which examined the scale of U.S. natural gas reserves and the potential of this fuel to reduce greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. Undertaken by the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), the study concluded that natural gas will play a leading role in reducing GHG emissions over the next several decades.

The findings, summarized in an 83-page report, were presented to lawmakers and senior administration officials in Washington.

“Much has been said about natural gas as a bridge to a low-carbon future, with little underlying analysis to back up this contention. The analysis in this study provides the confirmation — natural gas truly is a bridge to a low-carbon future,” said MITEI Director Ernest J. Moniz in introducing the report.

The study found that there are significant global supplies of conventional gas. How much of this gas gets produced and used, and the extent of its impact on greenhouse gas reductions, depends critically on some key political and regulatory decisions.

Some of the study’s key findings:

• The United States has a significant natural gas resource base, enough to equal about 92 years’ worth at present domestic consumption rates. Much of this is from unconventional sources, including gas shales. While there is substantial uncertainty surrounding the producibility of this gas, there is a significant amount of shale gas that can be affordably produced.

• Globally, baseline estimates show that recoverable gas resources probably amount to 16,200 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) — enough to last over 160 years at current global consumption rates. Further, this global resource figure, excluding the U.S. and Canada, does not include any unconventional gas resources, which are largely uncharacterized in the rest of the world.

• In order to bring about the kind of significant expansion in the use of natural gas identified in this study, substantial additions to the existing processing, delivery and storage facilities will be required in order to handle greater amounts and the changing patterns of distribution (such as the delivery of gas from newly developed sources in the Midwest and Northeast).

• Environmental issues associated with producing unconventional gas resources are manageable but challenging.

In the transportation sector, the study found a somewhat smaller role for natural gas. The use of compressed or liquefied natural gas as a fuel for vehicles could help to displace oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but to a limited extent because of the high cost of converting vehicles to use these fuels. By contrast, making methanol, a liquid fuel, out of natural gas requires much less up-front conversion cost and could have an impact on oil usage and thus improve energy security, but would not reduce greenhouse gases.

From the report comes one recommendation directed toward the transportation sector: remove policy and regulatory barriers to natural gas as a transportation fuel.

Ceramic/Plastic Component for LED

The German ceramics materials specialist OxiMaTec GmbH has been the winner of the 2009 EuroMold Gold Award fort its innovative ceramic/plastic composite-based components that have been designed for automotive light-emitting diode (LED) headlamp housing. These components, which are produced by Graveurbetrieb Leonhardt, a specialist in ceramics pressing, sintering, machining and injection molding, have a hybrid structure based on a high-heat ceramic functional part overmolded with a thermoplastic material. As a result the new headlamp housing exhibit high temperature resistance and allows eliminating wear problems. The ceramic takes care of heat dissipation while the thermoplastic provides elasticity and impact resistance.

Ford Formulates Soy-based Formula to Improve Car Parts Made of Rubber

Ford Motor Company's biomaterial researchers have engineered a patent-pending formula to use renewable soy oil to improve rubber car parts and make them more environmentally friendly.

By using renewable soy oil as a 25 percent replacement for petroleum oil, Ford researchers more than doubled rubber's stretchability and reduced its environmental impact. Soy-based rubber parts such as radiator deflector shields, air baffles, cupholder inserts and floor mats are under consideration for future Ford vehicle programs.

"Ford is focused on finding innovative ways to make our vehicles more eco-friendly," said Cynthia Flanigan, Ford technical leader in elastomeric polymers. "Soy-based rubber has win-win potential as it provides superior stretchability and serves as a renewable resource that helps reduce carbon dioxide emissions from raw materials."

Beyond soy oil

The scope of Ford's recent rubber research, which was funded in part by grants from the United Soybean Board (USB), included the use of soy fillers (flour, meal) as well as soy oils. Ford researchers found that soy fillers could provide an inexpensive and environmentally friendly partial replacement of carbon black, a petroleum-based material traditionally used to reinforce rubber. Used together, soy oil and soy fillers could replace up to 26 percent of the petroleum-based content in automotive rubber applications.

While rubber's role in automotive applications is generally not a glamorous one, it is significant. According to the International Rubber Study Group, the automotive sector accounts for more than 50 percent of worldwide rubber consumption, which exceeded 22 million metric tons in 2008. Automotive rubber usage is expected to rise more than 4 percent through 2013.

Sustainable solutions

Ford demonstrated that soy-based foams could be formulated to pass stringent requirements for automotive applications, starting with seats for the 2008 Ford Mustang and headliners for the 2010 Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner. The new 2011 Ford Explorer will become the 23rd model to feature soy foam. With bio foam on more than 2 million vehicles, Ford has annually reduced its petroleum oil usage by more than 3 million pounds and its carbon dioxide emissions by 11 million pounds.

The use of soy content in automotive applications also supports American farmers. The United Soybean Board, which oversees investments of all U.S. soybean farmers for research and promotion efforts, works closely with Ford in an effort to get soy-based technology commercialized. "USB remains committed to funding the research, development and commercialization of new industrial uses for soybeans, and works with companies like Ford to leverage industry research dollars," says Marty Ross, USB New Uses Committee chair and a soybean farmer from Delmar, Del. "Use of soy-based products reduces the U.S. dependence on imported oil and decreases the country's use of petrochemicals."

Ford also is looking at the use of other renewable sources for foam, including grape seed and sunflower oil. In addition to bio foam, the company is working with post-consumer recycled resins to make underbody systems, post-industrial recycled yarns for seat fabrics, repurposed nylon carpeting made into nylon resin and molded into cylinder head covers, and wheat straw-reinforced plastic parts.

"By increasing the use of recycled or renewable content and reducing the use of undesirable materials whenever possible, we're helping to reduce waste to landfills by millions of pounds - and we're doing it around the world," said John Viera, Director - Sustainability and Environmental Policy, Ford.

The use of recycled or renewable content is making a positive impact on the environment and Ford's bottom line. In 2009, Ford reduced the amount of automotive-related plastics to landfills by nearly 30 million pounds and saved approximately $4.5 million by reusing recycled materials.

Bio Polymers Market

The total sunk-in capacity for biopolymers in 2009 was around 500 million lbs. These include polylactide acid [PLA] (NatureWorks, Galactic, Hycail BV); polyhydroxyalkanoates such as PHAs, PHB, and PHBH (Biomer, Procter&Gamble); polymers based on bio-based PDO (DuPont); cellulose polymers (Innovia Films)¹; epoxy polymers from bio-glycerol; and starch polymers and blends (AkzoNobel [National Starch Chemical] and several other players). NatureWorks (Cargill Dow) is the major commercial player with a PLA capacity of 280 million lbs²; and Novamont is the major producer of starch polymers and blends, with a capacity of 120 million lbs.³

The total capacity of biopolymers is expected to reach 1.3 billion lbs, if Braskem's 400 million lbs/year of bio-polyethylene production and Braskem's/Nova Zymes's 400 million lbs/year⁴ of bio-polypropylene production materializes in Brazil. At these levels, the biopolymer's share of the total global production of synthetic polymers will be a meager 0.26%! If biopolymers were to replace all of the polymer products, the amount of biopolymer production would need to increase nearly 400-fold (from 1.3 billion lbs to over 520 billion lbs). This would undoubtedly put a strain on our planet's ecosystem and require massive deforestation.

New software for filament winding pattern generation

A tapered vessel mandrel showing a helical winding, the transition and a circumferential winding. Band colors indicate the winding angle. © Seifert and Skinner & Associates, Inc.
Seifert and Skinner & Associates, Inc. (SS&A) has introduced ComposicaD™; as announced on the 07th of July 2010. This software generates winding patterns for any filament winding machine. Modules and packages in the ComposicaD lineup allow winding for:
• pipes and tubes;
• tanks and vessels;
• any figure of revolution;
• pipe tees and elbows;
• spars;
• other geometric shapes.

The software was designed from the ground up to be completely user friendly, making it quick for the part programmer to make parts. The software is uniquely focused at the part level, not at the individual layer level, where much of today’s existing software is focused.

Many filament winders make a range of products – pipes or tanks that vary only in the overall length or diameter. Using ComposicaD, the part programmer builds the desired laminate table – the different layers of circumferential, helical and transition winding – and then can produce a range of parts, simply by varying the part length and/or diameter. ComposicaD automatically recalculates all of the layers to produce the new part. This can save an enormous amount of time, since each part doesn’t have to be laboriously programmed individually layer by layer.

ComposicaD uses many improved algorithms for calculating the fiber paths and machine motions. The software produces exactly symmetric laminates, produces a “time optimal trajectory”, controls the fiber speed and acceleration, automatically generates minimum length transitions, and more. ComposicaD maintains a database of materials – commonly used fiber band setups – which include the band width, band thickness, maximum slip potential, band density, cost and other parameters. These parameters are used to calculate laminate weights, length of fiber consumed, and costs as well as the winding time, both on a total part basis and for the individual lamina.

ComposicaD produces machine output for up to six axes of motion – spindle, carriage, cross carriage, rotating eye, yaw axis and perpendicular axis. ComposicaD automatically calculates the thickness buildup and adjusts the winding contour. Winding speeds are controlled by the machine accelerations and velocities, including the fiber speed, and can be varied up to the limits, which are specific for the target winding machine.
ComposicaD produces output for all types of CNC winding machines and has capability to control other devices associated with the winding process, such as fiber tension, resin bath temperature, mandrel pressure, and other parameters.

Composicad is available exclusively through Seifert and Skinner & Associates and leading winding machine manufacturers.