CFT™ Technology History

For decades, the pursuit of a thermoplastic resin matrix with continuous fiber architecture has been a high profile pursuit of many engineered material companies. Development programs have ranged from simple thermoplastic powder deposition, ultrasonic commingling, pre-preg systems, and solvent-based deposition techniques to very unsuccessful attempts at introducing highly viscous molten thermoplastic into a high fiber volume cross-section. Polygon Company has been a pioneer in the search for thermoplastic composite material solutions. Going back several decades, Polygon made repeated investments in proprietary technology that would allow a number of engineered thermoplastics to be deposited on continuous fiber architecture. Sadly, these investments proved largely fruitless until the late 1990's. At that time, a number of new processing and raw material precursor technologies converged, allowing Polygon to refocus on CFT™ processing and design technology.

The ability of thermoplastic resins to successfully manage short and long (under 2" in length) fiber reinforcement has improved extruded plastics' strength and durability, but the ultimate mechanical property enhancement of thermoplastics can not be truly discovered until continuous filaments can be successfully consolidated at high fiber volumes into the entire thermoplastic resin matrix, whether in the form of an extrusion or a pelletized material. Polygon Company's CFT™ Division represents commercially available technology that allows various thermoplastic resins to be delivered within high volume continuous fiber architectures to extruded profiles. Application areas for complex extruded profiles focus on two primary areas: first, applications for replacing extruded thermoplastic materials that cannot meet structural or other mechanical requirements. Second, ideal applications for CFT™ materials are applications where metallic extrusions are not ideal due to corrosion, weight, or durability.

Continuous Fiber Thermoplastics are the first ever production capable material using continuous, non-broken filaments in a thermoplastic resin matrix at high fiber volumes (55-60% Fv). These materials can be used in high-pressure flat sheet molding applications, or in hybridized process combining pultrusion and extrusion. Pultrusion is similar to extrusion with the exception that pultrusion affords the use of high volumes of continuous filaments. Because of these high fiber volumes, the profile must be "pulled" through the process. The hybridized CFT™ process generates both symmetrical and non-symmetrical shapes that have constant geometries along the length of the profile. The CFT™ process introduces thermoplastic resins into the cross-section of the profile, resulting in a profile that has excellent mechanical properties such that the finished CFT™ profile can compete with many metallic extrusions.

Unlike either short or long filled thermoplastic resins, CFT™ materials have 100% of their fibers continually connected throughout the axial direction of any profile. This means that CFT™ materials have no break in the fiber architecture. As a result, they can fully optimize the design advantages of a traditional composite material with the processing and product advantages of thermoplastic extrusions.