All composite profiles and tubing are manufactured at our high tech facility in southern Sydney.  With 1000sqM of floor space our factory houses a wide range of specialist machines and tools for the fabrication of composite sections.  Our two main fabrication technologies are Filament Winding and Pultrusion, these are described in further detail below.

CST composite tubing is produced by filament winding. This is the automated process of wrapping resin impregnated filaments (rovings or tows) in a geometric pattern over a rotating male mandrel. The component is then cured under high pressure and temperature.

The filament winding process produces considerable advantages over conventional hand-laid and fabric wrapped techniques. Advantages include precise fibre orientations, high fibre-to-resin ratios, straight uncrimped fibre paths, high consistency and repeatability.

We have the capability to wind any fibre angle from 0 degrees (ie uni-directionals) to 90 degrees. Also the ability to bias unidirectional fibres around the periphery of a tube to gain different properties in different planes. With tapered shapes we have the ability to vary wall thickness/fibre angle along the length of the tube

By changing the number of winding circuits together with fibre angle we can produce any wall thickness and ranging tube strength and stiffness. These factors are predicted prior to production by our finite element analysis (FEA) models and later verified by in-house testing. Generally we can predict tube stiffness, thickness, weight, etc to within a couple of percent error.  

CST now has the capability to pultrude composite profiles using one of two machines located on the upper level of our factory.  The process of pultrusion involves pulling resin impregnated fibres through a heated die where the composite is formed to its final shape and cured in a continuous process.  The cured profile is then automatically cut to length.

Pultrusion Advantages

The pultrusion process offers considerable advantages for the production of composite profiles:

• Pultrusion is an extremely economical method of impregnating and curing composite profiles.  It therefore offers a very cost effective solution to the customer
• The resin and fibre content are accurately controlled resulting in a profile with consistent quality, weight and mechanical properties
• Excellent dimensional tolerance can be achieved
• Structural properties of the laminates can be very high since the profiles have excellent fibre alignment together with high fibre volume fraction

Applications

Pultrusion lends itself to high volume applications since the process in continuous and requires long runs to be cost effective.  Die costs can be quite high and thus total production volume must be suitably long such that these costs are adequately amortised.

Pultrusion can be used to create a wide variety of profiles such as rods, tubes, flat bar, angle, I beams and much more.  Please Contact Us for further information about our standard range and custom profiles that can be offered.