Carbon Fiber Prepreg Tapes Slitting Traverse Spooling Machine

Our carbon fiber prepreg tapes slitting traverse winding machine is designed and developed by ourselves.  90% of domestic thermoplastic UD tape or sandwich panel products suppliers have cooperated with us.

The machine can slit carbon fiber prepreg tapes from 5 mm to 10mm in width into all kinds of carbon fiber strips like thermoset epoxy carbon fiber, thermoplastic glass fiber, and carbon fiber Unidirectional tapes. It is designed according to the needs of customers and technical requirements.

The slitting speed of JT-SLT-250S can be adjustable from 30m/min to 95m/min according to customer requirements, and the cutting accuracy is high enough less than 0.125mm.

Our traverse winding machine has many advantages such as low failure rate, high efficiency, and easy operation, etc.

We have more than 12 years of experience in manufacturing carbon series machines. Our products are used in various fields such as the aviation industry, aerospace industry, automobile industry, and other industries that require high-quality carbon fiber materials with high strength and lightweight.

To slit the narrow strips, a slitting and spooling machine is required, and then the AFP (Automatic Fiber Placement) or ATL procedure is performed ( Automatic Tape Laying).

Although the AFP and ATL procedures are absolutely equivalent, they are used in different ways to fulfill certain structure construction objectives, such as providing strength or stiffness where it is needed.

The main distinction between the two methods is that AFP uses overhead tape placement equipment, whereas ATL employs a vacuum-assisted head. Because of this distinction, it’s important to note that, due to the lack of a vacuum source, ATL can’t be used for all applications.

The entire procedure is totally automated, with the cutting machine cutting the narrow strip to the desired length based on the control panel’s width setting. After that, we can make CFK parts with AFP (Automatic Fiber Placement) or ATL (Automatic Tape Laying).

Knowledge about carbon fiber prepreg tape

Carbon fiber prepreg tapes are divided into two categories: glass fiber prepreg tapes and carbon fiber prepreg tapes.

Most composites production techniques use fiberglass prepreg tapes as basic material, such as carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP), glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP), polyester reinforced plastics (ERP), and polypropylene reinforced plastics (EPR), and so on. In CFRP composite materials manufacturing procedures such as direct wet-out fabrication, carbon fiber prepreg tapes are commonly employed as reinforcement materials.

For CFRP reinforced plastic composites, AFP (Automatic Fiber Placement) or ATL (Automatic Tape Laying) is employed.

Carbon fiber that has been prefabricated into tape or tube form is coiled onto a mandrel surface and cured at high temperatures in an autoclave or oven in this procedure. It’s often used to make aircraft and automotive parts, as well as other complex goods that require a lot of stiffness, such as boat hulls or wind turbine blades.

Advantage of our traverse winding machine

Compared with the slitting rewinding, spooling has an advantage to rewinding longer UD tape strands on a longer length, and rewinding patterns in different methods flexibly to meet different working processes.

Two servo motors are installed on one spooling head, one for rewinding, and one for the traverse movement journey.

The spooling head features a 360° rotating axis and servo motors drive.

It has the ability to change the angle of the winding arm to meet the needs of various carbon fiber prepreg tapes. When the winding arm starts up or stops abruptly, it uses an eccentric gear reducer with a big torque capacity, which ensures that the torque is stable.

The unwinding and winding shafts are driven by the servo motor via a gearbox, and the unwinding and wind-up speeds are proportional to the servo motor frequency.

Spooling is the process of forming a continuous composite strip from cut rolls of prepreg tape. The spool is wound with the tape in a helicoidal pattern to prevent the layers from unwinding during production and transportation.

Thanks to our own design software, all kinds of spooling working methods are workable: spool winding pattern: Level wind, Taper wind, Reverse Taper Wind, Magpak wind, step wind, etc.

For most applications, carbon fiber prepreg tapes are supplied as flat reels which need to be slit into strips prior to winding on a spool.

A longer rewinding spooling rolls means less roll change and working efficiency improved.

The spooling process is very important in the manufacturing of carbon fiber composites. The quality of the final products depends on how well the spooling process is done, especially for high-performance parts where strength and stiffness are critical factors.

Due to its special features, carbon fiber prepreg tapes are commonly used for aircraft, aerospace vehicles and their parts, cars, boats, and other civil engineering applications such as bridge construction, etc.

Due to some Epoxy Carbon UD tapes, the protective film lamination functions are featured. After slitting, before spooling, one 10mm PE Film strip will be laminated with the carbon tape strands, then spooled in pyramidical patterns. This technology is required for all the thermoset epoxy carbon tapes.

In order to keep the PE film lamination softness, one magnetic braked is installed for the PE film unwinding tension control. and PLC controls the constant tensions.

What’s more, we designed two sets of the total different soft programs for different materials: Thermoplastic carbon/ glass Fiber UD tapes are hard and tough, but the thermoset Carbon Woven Tapes are soft and adhesive. Their physical properties are totally different, so the tension controls and preset parameters are completely different.

One machine with 2 sets of software, it seems like you have two machines with different features. Jota Machinery as a CFRTP UD Tape equipment manufacturer always supplies value-added equipment to help you create a higher value and wealth.

Thank you!