Schuler now offers lines which it claims can economically produce carbon fibre-reinforced plastic (CFRP) parts, even in large volumes.
For the manufacturing of carbon parts, the company says it uses the RTM (Resin Transfer Molding) process. Due to the geometry of the part or cavity surface, the die’s centre of loading is not necessarily in the middle of the press and there are also off-centre forces from the injection positions.
With a positioning speed of 1mm/s, Schuler claims its presses achieve parallelism values of 0.05mm in absolute terms with diagonal clamping surfaces of 4m.
The preform and part handling processes, as well as the necessary die cleaning, account for a considerable part of the RTM cycle.
On request, Schuler says it can fit the RTM presses with two shuttle-moving bolsters so that a common upper die can be operated with two alternating and movable lower dies. This reduces downtime to the period it takes to replace the lower dies.