TeXtreme has unveiled the ±45° Grid fabric, a new addition to their line of Spread Tow products. The new version of TeXtreme Spread Tow fabric will broaden the ability to optimise Spread Tow solutions for new applications and markets. TeXtreme Spread Tow carbon reinforcements use spread tows to produce optimised reinforcements for ultra-light composites.

TeXtreme Spread Tow Grid can be highly tailored to meet specific needs such as increasing torsional stiffness with minimum weight increase or enabling radio transmittency through the fabric’s opening. The new grid material can be used in monolithic structures as well as for sandwich skins in either a prepregged form or dry form for infusion. Because of its extremely low 21gsm areal weight, this version of the dry grid material can be wet out by capturing excess resin from its neighbouring prepreg plies.

Even though the Grid fabric has designed gaps which resemble a lattice, its characteristics are similar to other TeXtreme Spread Tow reinforcements. By using the Grid fabric by itself or in combination with the other products in the TeXtreme family, optimised reinforcement solutions can be created which enable customers to reduce the weight of their products without sacrificing mechanical properties. The new grid fabric offers excellent stability while handling and can be either manually or automatically cut or handled while being prepregged in standard hot melt processes.

Andreas Martsman, VP marketing and sales of Oxeon, says, “We are very pleased to introduce another innovative extension of the TeXtreme product family. We believe that this development brings a great value to our customers as we will be able to further optimise the reinforcement solution for each application. I am sure this new TeXtreme version will also unveil new opportunities in an even broader spectrum of applications.” (GK)