Technology:
PlasmaBound have developed a patent-pending technology which modifies a matured technology “Atmospheric Cold Plasma” (compressed air) and retasked it from an ‘Activation’ to an ‘Ablation’, causing no heat affected zones, leaving no residue and revealing in a repeatable way undamaged fibres to act as an anchor matrix for structural adhesives. By being able to scientifically modify the Polar/Dispersive content of your composite, PLASMABOUND can now target your Polar/Dispersive adhesive and ensure an optimised interlocking scenario, in a predictive and highly repeatable way. CPA increases your Surface Free Energy for weeks and months instead of hours, enabling you to rethink your supply chain!
For more information, contact us at: info@plasmabound.com
What We Offer:
Plasma Bound has developed a device name ‘Vulcan’ that communicate with a standard plasma generator to establish and control recipe parameters in accordance with the specific treatment in play.
This device has levels of encryption and hardening and offers the customer multiple recipe options depending on operational needs while protecting Plasma Bound’s IP. Presently this IP resides principally in the technology itself and the control software, as the hardware is OTS.
Vulcan+’ will involve adopting Plasma Bound’s Vulcan product into the cloud offering inherent scalability, while building the ability for real-time machine-learning processing of our proprietary adaptive algorithms through feedback data generated within the plasma unit. This would improve Plasma Bound’s ability to deploy and control licenses and recipes, while also understanding customer needs through in-field data generation. This iterative, de-risking approach, is implemented ultimately to facilitate the product road-map to ‘Argos’, as cloud and ML adoption will offer real-time control, process analytics, and at-line quality control through feedback at the treatment area – a holy grail for the industry, and highly valuable production/industry data for Plasma Bound.
Sectors :
Sectors where PlasmaBound’s patented Controlled Polymer Ablation (CPA) technology supports new lightweighting design opportunities include aerospace, transport, marine, sport & leisure, renewable & consumer electronics.
The adoption of sustainable and recyclable fibre reinforced thermoplastic composites which are stronger and considerably lighter than both high strength steel & aluminium will intensify the need for our disruptive step-change technology, which facilitates the structural adhesive joining of carbon and glass fibre reinforced composites at high speed.
The CPA technology will also accelerate the adoption of lightweight composites into multi-material/hybrid structural assemblies by enabling reliable adhesive joining. Reduced waste production, reliance on metal fasteners with lower production cost through in-line operation simplifications.
Automotive, Transport
Light-weighting is a key issue for the industry with the tougher CO2 targets from International regulators.
Current composite joining processes are often batchwise, involve manual steps and suffer from poor repeatability – particularly for dissimilar materials. For highly automated, high volume just-in-time operations such as those in the Automotive industry, this continues to present significant cost, complexity and reliability issues – hindering adoption of composites generally, despite regulatory/consumer pressures.
CPA technology can enable a fully automated, in-line pre-treatment step for your joining operations. CPA can remove contaminants, including primers, mould release, as part of the process and leaves no residue. CPA both reveals undamaged fibres to the desired depth (in 100th of microns) and activates the substrate surface for a longer time (up to several weeks/months), in a single step allowing you to rethink your supply chain.
CPA offers a uniquely repeatable pre-treatment and a significant improvement in bond strength, failure mode repeatability and process reliability.
BIW, liftgates, bumpers, EV Battery, EV engine; PP, PA,PA66, ABS-PC, PBT… Glass filled or Carbon filled.
To know more, contact us at: info@plasmabound.com.
Aerospace
Aerospace and New Space composites’ production volumes are climbing. Thermosets are in time going to be replaced by recyclable but more challenging to bond Thermoplastics. Like all assembly verticals, aerospace are experiencing regulatory, ethical, cost, and consumer pressures to build and run lower emission-level, cheaper and longer-range fleets.
Plasma Bound’s CPA is a breakthrough technology which ablates the surface of the composite, revealing undamaged fibres in a clean, controlled and repeatable way, allowing for the likes of PEEK/PAEK, PPS/PEI, Aramids… to be bonded to another composite or a metal (Aluminium / Titanium, etc.) efficiently including tubes and structures.
By just ‘skimming’ the surface without revealing fibres, we can prepare large surfaces for painting (thermoplastics) or coating.
The ability to not damage the surface allows us to ablate “mesh surfaces” without damaging the mesh surface (like sanding for example). CPA also allows for electric continuity via the fibres.
Our CPA technology allows you to know bond to the surface weeks and months after our unique ablation process.
To know more, contact us at: info@plasmabound.com
Aerospace: Drones, Defence & Tubes
The ability to carry greater payload/fuel, for longer, while operating lighter (and stronger) craft is critical to consumer, commercial and military operators as well as manufacturers.
Efficient bonding of Composite/Composite and Composite/Metal structures are critical to the future survivability of drone manufacturers, bringing with them complex, slow, unreliable joining steps in an era where volumes are exploding.
CPA Technology permits drone manufacturers to lean out their assembly processes for higher-volume operations, debottlenecking the joining process into one simple pre-treatment operation.
The superior bond strengths and greater process reliability offered by CPA permits further lightweighting through the elimination of heavy metal stiffeners. CPA can reach challenging areas like inside/outside tubes in a highly repeatable way.
To know more, contact us at: info@plasmabound.com
Space: Structures, Solar Panels & Truss (tubes)
The ability to carry greater payload/fuel, for longer, while operating lighter (and stronger) craft is critical to Space (commercial and military) operators as well as manufacturers.
Composite/Composite and Composite/Metal (Aluminium, Titanium) structures are critical to the future survivability of many manufacturers, but these bring with them complex, slow, unreliable joining steps in an era where volumes are exploding, moving from the 100s to the 10,000++ units/year.
CPA Technology permits manufacturers to lean out their assembly processes for higher-volume operations by optimising at speed the joining process into one simple pre-treatment operation prior to adhesion. CPA allows to treat challenging areas like CFRP tubes, inside and outside, allowing manufacturers to bond repeatably metal (Al, Ti) to them.
Avoid the unreliable long & dirty sanding operations!
The superior bond strengths and greater process reliability offered by CPA permits further lightweighting through the elimination of metal stiffeners/inserts and fixings.
To know more, contact us at: info@plasmabound.com.
Aerospace: Helicopters & eVTOL
The ability to carry greater payload, for longer, while operating lighter (and stronger) craft is critical to commercial and military operators as well as manufacturers.
Composite/Composite and Composite/Metal structures in particular (and MRO) are critical to the future survivability of many helicopter manufacturers, these bringing with them complex, slow, unreliable joining steps in an era where volumes are exploding, while regulatory expectations are tightening.
CPA Technology permits helicopter/urban mobility manufacturers to lean out their assembly processes for higher-volume operations, by debottlenecking the joining process into one simple pre-treatment operation prior to adhesion.
The superior bond strengths and greater process reliability offered by CPA permits further light-weighting through the elimination of metal stiffeners and fixings.
CPA Technology additionally offers a quick in-situ repair option for composite structures, which can offer structural performance, independent of surface conditions.
To know more, contact us at: info@plasmabound.com
Bicycles – Sport & Leisure
CPA technology enables the usage of composites for bikes and many Sport & Leisure equipment to have frames over 50% stronger, and 30% more rigid than current best-available hand-assembly methods.
All this while capable of operating at high-volume in a clean and repeatable way. A new automated and at speed treatment of tubes (inside/outside) thermoset or thermoplastic allows to rethink your supply chain. PLASMA BOUND’s CPA technology can also remove primers and paint.
To know more, contact us at: info@plasmabound.com
Wind Turbines: Renewables
Wind energy systems suffer from a high degree of environmental erosion and particulate ablation from sources such as rain, hail, debris and wildlife.
CPA technology can play a critical role in permitting in-situ repair of turbine components, including complete replacement of leading-edge erosion layers. CPA does not require a pre-treatment step and leaves no residue, resulting in a greater degree of control over the ultimate bond. CPA supports fully automated repair solutions. CPA thus extends lifetimes of assets and reduces maintenance costs.
To know more, contact us at: info@plasmabound.com.
Marine
While FRP assembly processes are quite mature in the marine sector, the increased application of complex composite materials is beset by high levels of rejected components and rework.
CPA technology enables the use of smaller components (less risk/cost) in a quick assembly process which can count on reliable bonding steps. This increases flexibility in component design and in the assembly process in general.
To know more, contact us at: info@plasmabound.com
Transport: Passenger/Freight
The ability to carry greater payload/fuel for longer, while operating lighter (and stronger) craft is critical to commercial and manufacturers.
Composite/Composite and sandwich structures, and Composite/Metal structures are critical to the future survivability of many aircraft manufacturers (including MRO), as the industry moves generally to lower energy EV drive trains. These bring with them complex, slow, unreliable joining steps which drives higher materials wastage, destructive testing, rejects and shorter maintenance intervals – involving at times prohibitively expensive materials or challenging ones like PA materials.
CPA Technology permits manufacturers to lean out their assembly processes for higher-volume and lightweighting operations by debottlenecking the joining process into one simple pre-treatment operation prior to adhesion.
The superior bond strengths and greater process reliability offered by CPA permits further lightweighting through the elimination of metal stiffeners and fixings.
CPA Technology additionally offers a quick in-situ repair option for composite structures, which can offer structural performance, independent of surface conditions.
To know more, contact us at: info@plasmabound.com.
Consumer Goods
CPA technology enables the usage of composites for consumer equipment, treating surfaces before bonding glass or other devices to various CFRP.Thermoplastics will be used more extensively, requiring better surface treatments at speed. CPA provides the high repeatability required for this high volume industry.
PLASMA BOUND’s CPA technology can also remove primers and dirt, mould release.
To know more, contact us at: info@plasmabound.com.
3D Printing
3D Printing is becoming increasingly popular but is complex in itself. Joining/printing 2 different materials can become difficult, even if they are similar materials (i.e. PEEK/PAEK).
CPA Technology allows to ‘ablate’ the first surface printed to allow a strong bond of the second surface printed to it.
CPA allows an automation of the process even for complex 3D shapes and improves greatly the combination of various materials at speed.
To know more, contact us at: info@plasmabound.com.
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