Lindau, Germany – Weaving is one of the oldest manufacturing processes known to man, but in the age of technical textiles it is about to undergo exciting new transformations, says Peter D. Dornier, chief executive officer and co-owner of Lindauer DORNIER GmbH. About 60 percent of all woven carbon and aramid fabrics, 50 percent of all glass fibre fabrics, two out of every three airbags and three out of four motor vehicle tyres worldwide are woven on machines built beside Lake Constance.
Mr. Peter D. Dornier
“We are currently standing at the door step of a completely new era, in which wovens can be produced not only two-dimensionally but also in three dimensions and with reproducible “digital quality”
Peter D. Dornier, Chief Executive Officer of Lindauer DORNIER GmbH
Please explain the role of sustainability in practical terms?
To name just a few of the latest milestones: Very recently, we created the label “DORNIER Composite Systems®“. This has enabled us to combine our expertise in constructing weaving machines and film stretching machines for a more efficient process for manufacturing high performance composites from film and fibres. Or our “The Green Machine” concept, with the twin objectives of producing exceptionally high-performance woven products for protecting people and the environment, while maximizing resource conservation. This sustainability has been a part of the corporate DNA of Lindauer DORNIER GmbH ever since it was founded, and not just because our weaving machines have been the same colour green for the last 50 years. For example, I am thinking of a market like China, which accounts for a quarter of our sales at the moment. Among many other items, DORNIER machines are used there to produce filter fabrics for – desperately needed – pollution control in water and air. Incidentally, our “green” machine concept is derived from the basic idea of the VDMA Blue Competence initiative for optimizing machines or processes, that is to say reducing energy and air consumption will improve performance.
But with regard to sustainability, DORNIER goes yet another step further, because our weaving machines and film stretching systems typically have service lives lasting 30 to 40 years. These are certainly not “disposable products”. And one of our strengths is that we provide support with spare parts and service for as long as this makes financial sense for our customers. This is also what “The Green Machine” means to us.
A question about the innovation process: Where do your ideas come from?
One of our great advantages is that we are active in more areas than all of the other weaving machine builders. Our customer base includes, for example, wire weavers, which manufacture ultrafine filter fabrics for turbochargers, or metal printer cartridge fabrics, carbon fibre weavers, which make cables as thick as your finger on jacquard looms, Italian-clothing manufacturers, which produce soft, lightweight suit material with our air jet weaving machines. Not a few new ideas are inspired by transfer that is to say from the markets or straight from our customers themselves. For example, when a known feature is applied to new application fields, truly surprising, positive solutions are created – as in the case of our low-mass back beam, which was developed especially for weaving aramid fibres for antiballistic applications: an Italian wool weaver wanted to know whether this innovation could also be used successfully with wool. It was because of precisely this question that this back beam has now become standard for weaving wool on our machines. Another source of innovations is also our cooperation with a small number of European market, quality and technology leaders and the like from the aerospace industry.
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Weaving has been a part of human life for 6,000 years now – are there any new challenges and opportunities for this textile technology to face these days?
Most definitely. Weaving, the appeal of which is based precisely on the consistency of the materials produced, is practised these days in an astounding range of variations: From the very finest “flat” filtration meshes for blood or printing ink to the thick, heavy 3D multilayer fabrics used to reinforce conveyor belts. A woven fabric is always “intrinsically” digital anyway, the weft passes either over or under the warp. This means that in the weaving mill we have the only truly, purely digital manufacturing process – all other machines produce analogue structures, including those that are controlled digitally. We are currently standing on the threshold of a completely new departure, in which we can produce wovens that are structured not only in two but also in three dimensions and with reproducible “digital quality” as it were. Weaving as an intrinsically digital process has enormous potential, and we are only slowly beginning to realise what the future might bring – especially with regard to mass production.
What is meant regards sustainable industrial processing?
In future, we will undoubtedly be able to replace even more metals with plastics than ever before, or enhance the performance of metals or ceramics with textile reinforcement. If we want to become more mobile, but still be more lightweight, efficient and economical in terms of CO2, composites with carbon, glass or aramid fibres will be the only way ahead. And thermoplastics like PA, PP and HT polyester will become very important – particularly in terms of sheer quantity. For instance, the possible benefits of fibre-reinforced plastics in terms of safety are vast, and so far we have not even scratched the surface of the applications and implications of this for mass-produced motor vehicles. The age of metal in aerospace industry is already on the decline, and in hindsight will be nothing more than an intermezzo, also because of the issues surrounding CO2. Today, textile composite materials account for half the weight of modern aircraft, for the Airbus A350 it is over 50 percent, and for the Eurofighter 82 percent. However, in most cases unidirectional- (UD) textiles are currently used.
Peter D. Dornier and Prof. Dr. Thomas Gries
What I mean to say is this: It is precisely woven materials for which demand will increase in industrial applications. A woven mass production part is digital, and can be manufactured with total reproducibility in a robust production process. Just a quick glance at other textile technologies for comparison purposes: For weaving car airbags, that is to say in the field of safety-critical components, a single technician oversees 40 DORNIER weaving machines. In a large fabric facility operated by a car maker to produce structural components from carbon, these figures are practically reversed. This example shows what the weaving process has to offer in terms of globally distributable, industrial efficiency. The world’s leading airbag or tyre manufacturers already benefit from this every day, while large sections of the metal industry are still barely aware of what is coming. This just goes to show, textiles are making a comeback, but in an entirely different form, in aircraft, in cars, in wind turbines or even as the coating material on the boots of professional football players. Woven textiles, the standards and qualities of which can be reproduced almost identically anywhere in the world, are becoming more and more indispensable.
To read the longer technical version of the interview click here
Source: VDMA