The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

E.i. Dupont De Nemours and Company

Robert P Kusy

Kenneth C Kennedy, Ii

Scott Zufall

Vasile V Cosofret

Richard P Buck

David E Ruddell

Glenys Thorstenson

Hiawatha Demby

Erno Lindner

Matthew Camp

John Q Whitley

Elodia Cole

Brian Rucker

Aditya Patel

A pultrusion apparatus for manufacturing a fiber-reinforced plastic article having a non-linear shape includes a mold configured to receive a partially cured fiber-reinforced plastic article and to form the partially cured fiber-reinforced plastic article into a spirally wound shape. A drive mechanism is coupled to the mold and configured to rotate the mold such that the fiber-reinforced plastic article is taken up on the mold. An energy source is operatively associated with the mold and positioned so that the partially cured fiber-reinforced plastic article is cured in a spirally wound shape as the article is taken up on the longitudinally extending mold. The pultrusion apparatus allows for continuously shaping a non-linear fiber-reinforced plastic article, obviating the need for any of the work to be done by hand, which may be labor intensive, not as highly reproducible, and potentially contaminating.

Pultrusion apparatus for continuous fabrication of fiber-reinforced plastic articles having a non-linear shape, methods of fabricating such articles and compositions used therein

Disclosed are profiles of fiber-reinforced polymeric plastic and a pultrusion apparatus and method for the manufacture thereof. The apparatus is preferably vertically disposed. As one or more fibers is fed into the apparatus, each fiber is spread and wetted with monomer resin in a bundle spreader, formed in a die, and then subjected in a curing chamber to a source of radiation which initiates polymerization of the monomer, resulting in a fiber-reinforced polymeric plastic exiting from the pultrusion apparatus. Suitably, the radiation is ultraviolet, the monomer resin is methacrylate resin, and the fiber is quartz. The resultant profile is long and thin like a structural steel wire, but typically will have only 1/4 the weight thereof while having a strength comparable thereto. Thus, the profile is useful as an orthodontic wire as a replacement instead of structural steel wires used as orthodontic wires. Several profiles can also be aggregated and the aggregate used to make, for instance, artificial limbs or other structural products.

Pultruded fiber-reinforced plastic and related apparatus and method

Disclosed are a copolymer composition comprising a substituted halo-polymer wherein from about 0.01% to about by weight of the halo moieties therein are replaced with piperazine, and a flexible plastic film made from the copolymer. The copolymer is inherently conductive.

Synthesis of aminated PVCs by controlled reaction with piperazine

Specimen clamps or grips for locating and releasably retaining a specimen for testing on a dynamic mechanical analyzer which analyzer is of conventional construction with the improvement being in the specimen clamps.

Specimen grips for dynamic mechanical analyzer

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Chapel Hill, NC, United States of America

Robert P Kusy