High-performance material opening up new possibilities from K.D. Feddersen

With a wide range of high-quality compounds for diverse applications, the distributor supplies important sectors such as the automotive, aerospace, electrical and consumer goods industries, to name but a few.

K.D. Feddersen CEE GmbH, headquartered in Vienna, Austria, is the distributor for engineering plastics in the Central and Eastern European region within the Feddersen Group. In addition to the products of numerous other suppliers, the company markets the polymers made by Celanese and AKRO-PLASTIC. In particular, the distributor has a 30-year partnership with AKRO-PLASTIC GmbH, a compounder from Niederzissen in the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany and also a member of the Feddersen Group. Here the core competence of the compounder lies in highly reinforced, impact-resistant and mechanically high-strength compounds with the narrowest specifications. Innovative materials are developed and tested in the in-house competence centre.

The basis for the constant advancement of its know-how is a process concept known as ICX® Technology (Innovative Compounding and Extrusion Technology), which was developed jointly with the machine manufacturer FEDDEM and guarantees the highest and most consistent product quality.

The large group of polyamides also includes the polyarylamides (PARA or MXD6). This material group belongs to the aromatic high-performance polyamides and is often used as a metal substitute for surfaces requiring optical high quality. For example, a PARA filled with 30 percent glass fibre already has about 20 percent higher strength than a standard PA 6.6 GF 30. This becomes even clearer when comparing a standard PA 6.6 (AKROMID® A), a semi-aromatic PA blend (AKROLOY® PA) and a PARA (AKROLOY® PARA) with 60 percent glass fibre reinforcement each, see Table. AKROLOY® PARA also has a very high flowability. This property, in combination with the high strength and fundamentally amorphous nature, means that this material is predestined for the design of complex structural components.

However, AKRO-PLASTIC does not only use glass fibres as filler. In cooperation with a major OEM, the compounder also developed a portfolio with carbon fibres. These fibres are obtained from the dry waste material of carbon-fibre rovings and given the notation ICF.

Carbon fibres offer greater performance than glass fibres and have a lower density. For example, an AKROMID® A3 ICF 30 with a density of 1.28 g/cm³ achieves the strength of a PA 6.6 GF 60 with a density of 1.71 g/cm³. Since the ICF carbon fibre is cheaper than virgin carbon fibre, the component cost calculation yields a better price/performance ratio.

The compounder very quickly recognised the advantages of the material PARA in combination with the ICF carbon fibre and developed an AKROLOY® PARA ICF 40. This material has a stiffness of almost 40 GPa and is thus at the top of the performance range. The company Ucelo do Brasil demonstrated this impressively with a bucket elevator that is loaded by a tractor with a dead weight of 6.5 tonnes, see Figure. To view the video click here.