This article was published in Composites Australia Online Magazine in July. It provides further exposure for CST’s Towpreg and its unique benefits. You can click here to read the full article.
This article was published in the June/July edition of AMT (Australian Manufacturing Technology) Magazine. It explains the benefits of towpreg over wet winding and introduces CST’s towpreg and its unique benefits. You can read the article below or click here to read the full magazine.
We are very proud to announce that CST masts will be used on around half the boats competing in the upcoming Paris Olympics.
Our masts will be used on the ILCA6, ILCA7, 49er and 49erFX classes.
This has been the culmination of developing our own Towpregs (see separate News item on this) and the hard work of our Australian production team.
The consistency in the quality of our masts, resulting from the finest Towpregs produced on our unique closed loop system, will mean that no competitor gets an unfair advantage.
Over the past three years CST’s R&D team have been developing its own towpreg manufacturing capability at our Kurnell and Ingleburn facilities. Not only has CST spent years in their resin lab determining the best resin formulations for each type of fibre, but has also designed and built machines for towpreg manufacture incorporating unique resin impregnation techniques and closed loop feedback and controls.
CST believe it now has the highest quality and most consistent carbon fibre, fibreglass and aramid towpregs on the market.
We are currently using our towpregs to make superior composite spars and tubes in a clean room environment, however we are on track to ramp up production to be able to sell towpreg as a product in itself.
Stay tuned…
CST manufacture innovative carbon fibre solutions locally and export all over the world.
Here are a couple of shots from last months shipments to Europe.
As part of the Celebrating Australian Made editorial series, Brent Balinski interviewed our Managing Director Clive Watts.
‘Today CST is an archetypal high-performing Aussie SME manufacturer. Its highly-skilled team exports nearly everything it makes, and makes little fuss in the process.’
Next stop … U.S.A.
CST Composites is going global this year with a joint venture with U.S. firm Optimum Composite Technologies.
After 26 years, the move positions CST on the path as a leading player in the global green hydrogen supply chain.
The partnership complements both companies’ manufacturing abilities, giving CST Composites access to Optimum’s technical expertise and Intellectual Property (IP) in carbon fibre pressure vessels. It also means greater access to U.S. markets for its high quality, filament-wound composite tubing by leveraging Optimum’s U.S. facilities, customer base and supply chain.
CST Composites will expand its core capabilities in designing and producing Composite Pressure Vessels (CPVs) and other applications.
The Australian Government is committed to Australia being a major hydrogen player by 2030.
CST growth plans include establishing Australia’s first hydrogen vessel manufacturing facility, which will service emerging and growing demand from the defence, space, transport and energy sectors.
2020 has of course been a difficult year for everyone around the world. That said, it has been an exciting year for us and our 25th year at CST Composites.
Many milestones have been achieved throughout the year, including outgrowing our factory at Kurnell and moving production to a larger facility in Ingleburn, Western Sydney. We look forward to continuing our expansion of technology and production capacity in 2021. By no means exhaustive, here are a few of the achievements our team has made over the past year.
We’ve worked with all of our customers through periods of disruption and uncertainty to support their needs. Key to this has been the efforts made to increase our production capacity. The uncertainty brough on by COVID has greatly increased the difficulty of forecasting market demand for products, but by continuing to push the boundaries of our production capacity we have been able to meet the sudden spikes in demand caused by economies reopening. We’ve added an extra winding machine as well as increasing the level of automation across production, post processing of tubes and quality control.
One big milestone achieved in 2020 was the conversion of all production to prepreg fibre. This has numerous benefits in terms of minimising health and safety risks during production while ensuring consistency and repeatability of our products.
2020 saw the launch of TowPro masts for the I14, 16ft Skiff, Sabot and Flying 11 classes. Leveraging the technology developed for our Moth TowPro range, these masts feature machined aluminium fittings, precision joining sleeves for interchangeable panels and prepreg construction. The interchangeable panels allow for fine tuning mast bend by swapping out parts of the mast rather than building a completely new spar.
We have also launched class approved products for the ILCA 6 (Radial), 49er and 49erFX. We are excited to continue powering the highest levels of competitive sailing with these new products.
We were also proud to see AMSL Aero’s Vertiia eVTOL aircraft making headlines in the Australian Financial Review. CST’s engineering and materials knowledge have been supporting the wing spar development that will see this electric Vertical Take Off and Landing aircraft flying in 2021. Congratulations to the team at AMSL Aero and all involved for a job well done.
Congratulations to the following class champions who achieved fantastic results during 2020 using CST products:
We wish good luck and fair winds to our team sailors competing over the Australian summer.
CST is closed for the Christmas break from the 19th of December, restarting on the 4th of January. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year.
We’ve recently added a new winding machine to our volume manufacturing facility, which will be in operation soon to add extra capacity coming into Christmas. Adding additional machinery gives us the flexibility to take on more low volume custom work for high performance applications without interrupting existing production.
CST is proud to see AMSL Aero’s Vertiia eVTOL aircraft making headlines in the Australian Financial Review.
CST’s engineering and materials knowledge have been supporting the wing spar development that will see this electric Vertical Take Off and Landing aircraft flying in 2021. Congratulations to the team at AMSL Aero and all involved for a job well done.
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