FMC technology really consists of three factors. “What we wanted to create was a high-performance, chopped carbon fiber material that could be used in a much wider variety of applications and formed on commonly available equipment. “While there are many different continuous carbon fiber composites, they have limited application,” explains Koichi Akiyama, president, Gemini Composites and one of the developers of FMC. Cure occurs in 40-120 seconds at 130-150☌.ĭifficult Materials Make Automated Fabric Cutting More Indispensable than Ever By splitting larger tows into finer bundles, it’s possible to achieve materials with better and more uniform mechanical performance at lower cost than starting with aerospace-grade tows. It combines industrial-grade carbon fiber tows, which are chopped and split into smaller bundles, then impregnated with vinyl ester (VE) or epoxy matrices. Highly moldable, isotropic and better performingįMC edges closer to prepreg performance while retaining more of SMC’s processability and affordability. Called forged molding compound (FMC), the material is an advanced SMC reinforced with chopped carbon fiber and developed for structural applications with fairly complex designs using a compression molding variant. (Tokyo, Japan) with engineering support from Gemini Composites LLC (Seattle, Wash., U.S.), which Mitsubishi acquired in 2017. With new kinds of SMC come new application opportunities, as with a new product developed by Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. However, as compounders extend technology to more novel resins, reinforcement types and formats, SMC is being reinvented. Sheet molding compound (SMC) is a workhorse composite - in the form of a tough, thermosetting, B-staged, compression moldable sheet-form molding compound - used commercially since the early 1960s. Photo credit, all images: Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. Using FMC in conventional high-flow compression molding (lower image cross-flow direction) destroys the isotropic properties and can lead to property loss. A key element of Mitsubishi’s new forged molding compound (FMC) carbon fiber-reinforced SMC is the use of low-flow (but not low-pressure) compression molding, which helps preserve isotropic fiber orientation/distribution in the material to yield parts with high complexity and high mechanical properties for use in structural applications (upper image cross-flow direction).
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