3D printed customised composites

Fiberneering is a manufacturer of 3D printed fibre reinforced composite parts. They create customised strong and lightweight products in almost any shape. The company offers freedom in design, and possibilities for structural applications as well as prototypes. Because they do not make use of moulds, the production of the final product can start immediately, saving time and material. Fully functional carbon or glass fibre reinforced parts can be produced in almost any shape or form.

Using FRP3D technology, the company produces composite parts. These parts consist of carbon, glass or any other type of reinforcement in most common resin types. Because standard materials are used, the properties they obtain are as high as “traditional” composites and Fibereering can fully engineer the products to suit the application. More complex shapes can be made, fully optimised in a very cost effective way.

Sandwich cores are used in numerous applications. The advantages of honeycomb, foam or balsa cores are well known to industry: extremely high stiffness at very low mass. However, the costs of producing sandwich products in anything else than flat plate are very high. Generally, choosing a sandwich core material is a trade-off between density, shear and through thickness properties and processing. With printed cores, this selection process is history; optimise the core to the application!

Firstly, processing is no longer required. Usually, core materials are milled, thermoformed or pressed into the right shape. All these processes are expensive and require expensive machines or tooling. Here, the core is directly printed into the required shape. The skins on the core are printed as well, so they are extremely suitable for use in the patented co-curing technology.

Secondly, by changing the orientation, amount and thickness of the reinforcing trusses inside the core, the shear and through thickness properties of the core can be fully optimised.

And lastly, functions can be integrated. Any cable ducts, sensors, reservoirs, etc., can be printed at once and don’t need to be drilled or fastened afterwards. This again is an efficiency improvement compared to other sandwich construction.The internal structure can be modified and optimised to ensure maximum part performance: where loads are high a more dense internal structure is used and where loads are low, internal mass can be minimised.