Pultruded Products

Pultrusion is a manufacturing process for producing continuous lengths of reinforced polymer structural shapes with constant cross-sections. Raw materials are a liquid resin mixture (containing resin, fillers and specialized additives) and flexible textile reinforcing fibers. The process involves pulling these raw materials (rather than pushing, as is the case in extrusion) through a heated steel forming die using a continuous pulling device.

The reinforcement materials are in continuous forms such as rolls of fiberglass mat and doffs of fiberglass roving. As the reinforcements are saturated with the resin mixture (“wet-out”) in the resin bath and pulled through the die, the gelation, or hardening, of the resin is initiated by the heat from the die and a rigid, cured profile is formed that corresponds to the shape of the die.

While pultrusion machine design varies with part geometry, the basic pultrusion process concept is described in the schematic shown below.

Watch the Pultrusion Process

The creels position the reinforcements for subsequent feeding into the guide plate. The reinforcement must be located properly within the composite and this is the function of the reinforcement guides.

The resin bath saturates (wets out) the reinforcement with a solution containing the resin, fillers, pigment, and catalyst plus any other additives required. The interior of the resin impregnator is carefully designed to optimize the wet-out of the reinforcement.

On exiting the resin bath, the composite is in a flat sheet form. The preformer is an array of tooling which squeezes away excess resin as the product is moving forward and gently shapes the materials prior to entering the forming and curing die. In the forming and curing die, the thermosetting reaction is heat activated (energy is primarily supplied electrically) and the composite is cured (hardened).

On exiting the die, it is necessary to cool the hot part before it is gripped by the pull blocks (made of durable urethane foam) to prevent cracking and/or deformation by the pull blocks. Our manufacturer uses two distinct pulling systems, one that is a caterpillar counter-rotating type and the other a hand-over-hand reciprocating type to pull the cured profile to the saw for cutting to length.

In certain applications an RF (radio frequency wave generator) unit is used to preheat the composite before entering the die. When in use, the RF heater is positioned between the preformer and the die.