The CAMX 2017 entrants for this year’s coveted Awards for Composites Excellence (ACE) have been announced by the American Composites Manufacturers Association (ACMA). In the ACE ‘Market Growth’ category, one of the three shortlisted companies for the ‘Infinite Possibility for Market Growth Award’ is Shape Corp. for its ‘Curved Pultrusion Process for Highly Engineered Hollow Profiles’. The innovative new hollow pultrusion process uses Scott Bader’s Crestapol® 1250 urethane acrylate resin.

Being shortlisted for an award from the ACMA is one of the highest accolades a company can receive. Shape and the other finalist companies join an elite group of innovative technology leaders within the global composites and advanced materials community. During the rescheduled CAMX expo (Dec 11-14) details about all the 2017 ACE finalists will be on display in the Awards Pavilion in the main exhibition hall.  The winners will be announced during the show.

Shape is a global organization with 14 manufacturing facilities worldwide, operating as a full service, tier-one automotive and industrial component supplier, with in-house engineering services providing research and development, product design, optimization, CAE and an array of engineering support options, plus physical testing laboratory facilities.

Crestapol® 1250 was selected by Shape as the preferred pultrusion resin to use for this new processing technology as it enables the process to produce GFRP and CFRP profiles suitable for structural applications where both lightweight and high mechanical performance are required. Inherent toughness, good pigmentability for high quality component coloration, the ability to bond well to both glass and carbon fibers, plus being able to run at above average haul-off speeds to achieve high productivity output rates, were all critical attributes which convinced Shape to choose Scott Bader’s Crestapol® 1250 resin as the overall best performance resin for its new curved pultrusion process. Shape’s R & D team carried out comparative testing of Scott Bader’s urethane acrylate resin against a variety of different polyurethane and epoxy resin systems.

This innovative new pultrusion process was initially developed by Shape for a specific CFRP automotive application. Following extensive testing and successful part trials, Shape has secured a major new order to manufacture a curved, lightweight CFRP component for the US automotive industry, with Crestapol® 1250 as the specified pultrusion resin. However, Shape is expecting this new pultrusion process technology to be of interest to other industries needing similar curved lightweight composite solutions.

Crestapol® 1250 and other pultrusion resin grades available from Scott Bader have been formulated for both wet bath and injection pultruder processing systems. All Crestapol pultrusion resins achieve rapid wet out of reinforcement fibers, and being highly reactive, rapidly fully cures at ambient temperature without the need for post curing. The combination of this high reactivity along with the inherent toughness of the cured urethane acrylate resin, means that even when heavily ATH mineral filled for applications needing fire, smoke and toxic fume (FST) retardant properties, there is no loss of pultrusion line speed or mechanical properties.

Further information is available from Scott Bader North America by calling +1 330 920-4410 or e-mailing  info@scottbader-na.com. For further details about the Scott Bader Group, its global distributor network and the complete range of advanced materials for composites, go to www.scottbader.com.

For more details about Shape’s R & D technical centers, in-house engineering services and global manufacturing facilities go to www.shapecorp.com.