With the increasing variety of resin systems available for carbon fiber and other high-performance fibers, there is a growing need for development of sizing materials which interface well with each resin/fiber combination.

For the development of the sizing material, it is often difficult to experiment without obtaining un-sized fiber. Unless you produce the fiber in your own facility, in many cases it would be necessary to     de-size the fiber first, and then apply the desired sizing materials.

Any handling process can damage the fibers, and de-sizing / re-sizing can be particularly abrasive to the filaments. Thus, equipment for this process needs to be designed with extra care to prevent filament damage.

We can provide turn-key systems for single tow sizing development lines as well as multi-tow sizing lines for production scale output requirements. Single tow lines are scalable and configurable: in many cases they are compact table-top units. Production scale lines incorporate industrial-grade equipment, same as the equipment we provide for fiber production plants.

See below for some considerations for specifying the right equipment for the sizing line you may need.

In upstream composites production processes, it is often necessary to control a fiber or a band of fibers to an optimum tension value. However, identifying the correct tension is often overlooked, and production processes still utilize tensioning systems which were developed decades ago without much consideration of the actual tension they are generating.

The handling and guiding methods of carbon fibers
to prevent filament damage is often overlooked. However, it is an extremely important factor in carbon fiber production and downstream processes using carbon fiber.

Redirection with sharp angles, use of guides without proper surface finish, excessive tension, static contact points: these are all factors that can induce damage to the filaments in the carbon fiber tow. Broken filaments not only degrade the strength of the carbon fiber, but also cause issues in processing leading to production downtime.

Broken filaments accumulate on rotating parts and will snowball into a mess quickly, which not only needs an operator to intervene but can stop production or create defects in the product.

The main reason proper assessments are not made for fiber damage caused by inadequate handling is that there have been no quantitative means to measure fiber damage. Read more to find out about tools to accomplish this and some analyzation studies.

With the increasing variety of resin systems available for carbon fiber and other high-performance fibers, there is a growing need for development of sizing materials which interface well with each resin/fiber combination.

For the development of the sizing material, it is often difficult to experiment without obtaining un-sized fiber. Unless you produce the fiber in your own facility, in many cases it would be necessary to de-size the fiber first, and then apply the desired sizing materials.

A Portable Measuring Solution

At Izumi International, we produce feed rollers, nip rollers, pinch rollers, stretch rollers and driven winding systems designed to maintain a constant driving speed on fibers or web materials.  To calibrate our equipment, we built a portable calibration tool to quickly and accurately measure product length and the line/surface speed of rollers, webs, belts and product.  We realized this tool would also benefit our customers Quality and Maintenance groups that need to validate machine Line Speed/ Length displays or to troubleshoot and maintain their equipment. 

The PLSC-1000 portable counter provides a NIST traceable speed/length calibration system designed to be easily moved around and mounted to production equipment for test, calibration and verification of speeds and lengths shown on the production equipment displays.