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Smart Achievement Award winner 1999
In the right mould - for safety and productivity
Michael Thornally started in the racing yacht making business in the 1960's. then along came his wife, Denise, they made the decision to move into the field of industrial composites, by creating a company called Fibrecast (UK) Ltd. 'because we could foresee the potential of introducing the quality of yacht building into industrial component fabrication. This certainly set us apart from other manufacturers,' says Michael.
In the late 1980's they decided to look at the potential of phenolic resin-based, glass fibre reinforced plastic materials which offered a more fire-safe environment, given the findings of the Piper Alpha oil platform disaster offshore and the King's Cross underground conflagration.
Michael and his team discovered there was an alternative to the conventional but time-consuming hand-lay process for mouldings. Faced with a challenging but costly research and development programme, he aplied for a SPUR award, to create a resin transfer moulding (RTM) closed mould system, where the resin is injected under pressure into a totally closed mould.
Due to the recession we hadn't the money to start development until we received the SPUR award. The DTI money allowed us to develop the new process and special toolong. It was a matter of trial and error because of the care needed to thermal cycle the mould to cure the resin, combined with the aggressive nature of acid-based phenolics, which tend to destroy the tooling.
The new resin transfer moulding process promised to be faster, increasing productivity significantly, more accurate and safer for the operatives. Using a closed mould system for handling the aggressive phenolics would trap all the fumes inside the component rather than letting them escape into the atmosphere.
After 18 months of mind taxing development, and long nights spent fine-tuning the system to resolve tool failures, the RTM system eventually came on stream commercially, with immediate productivity and safety benefits.
Under the new process, a sheet of glass fibre material is sandwiched between two mould halves. Then resin is injected into the cavity between the moulds, saturating the glass fibre layer. The tooling is then thermal cycled (heated) using an integrated electrical heating or water heating `system, to cure the moulding in about one hour. 'As a result, up to six components can be manufactured per shift, compared to two mouldings with the hand lay process,' says Michael.
Though the hand lay process is still used for very complex mouldings like the Channel Tunnel Euroshuttle driver's desk, the closed mould RTM process has had an enormous impact on the company.
'The SPUR award enabled us to grow the product range from 5% to 45% of our current turnover, which rose to £2.8 million in 1998. During this period we've also increased the number of employees by 30% to 85. Though our main market is still British, products are also exported to Germany, Italy and Finland,' says Michael.
