Strength, lightness and recyclability with SrPP materials

Cato Composites BV develops and manufactures light weight components and parts using Thermoplastic Composite materials and processes. Besides glass- and carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastics, the company has been focusing a lot on the processing of self- reinforced composites.

Self-reinforced composites are fibre reinforced composite materials where the polymer matrix is reinforced by highly oriented polymer fibres, derived from the same polymer.

Compared with conventional fibre-reinforced composite materials, SrPP’s offer exceptional impact resistance and are fully recyclable and light-weight at the same time. Applications can be found in sports, personal protection, luggage, anti-ballistics and consumer products. E.g.  density of a glass, carbon, SrPP is respectively appr. 1,8 / 1,5 and 0,8 kg/l. In addition parts can be made thinner because of it’s exceptional impact performance. As a result:

SrPP parts can be up to 50% lighter than carbon.

The processing of SrPP’s not only requires specific know-how but also specific hardware, as the temperature operating window is quite a bit smaller than glass or carbon fiber reinforced materials. For example, the polymer fibres in the SRPP material will want to shrink during (pre)heating, which means that –among other things- clamping technology is needed in order to make excellent parts.

The past 10 years Cato has developed proprietary SrPP processing technology for making parts & components from SrPP and has also developed in-house technologies for customizing SrPP parts by the use of printing technologies and/or surface modifications.