Aldila is using large tow from Akzo today mainly because of the shortage of small tow. I am aware that they have had quality problems, but they use large tow for the majority of the shaft and then use small tow on the outside surface of the shaft for appearance. I would guess that large tow represents about 25% of their purchases today, with a plan to greatly increase that. They announced that their new line will run both 50K and 12K tow. There is no reason that you could not run large tow on small tow machines. In fact, if the large tow market does truly take off, all the carbon fiber suppliers could run large tow.
Yes they will use the fiber internally first, but they only use 1 to 1.5 million pounds a year today and are sizing their line for 2.5 million pounds. Since they will only be concerned with recovering fixed costs on the external sales, IMO they will sell the excess at marginal cost (This is bad news for all of the carbon fiber guys).
Todd, I will post some ML info in the near future. Basically, they have printed a bunch of Zoltek generated charts and a bunch of half truths on markets and competitors. Quite misleading IMO. When I get a chance, I will post a detailed assessment.
Interesting times ahead.
Flyguy. |
