Pultrusion Machine

A pultrusion machine manufactures continuous lengths of fiber-reinforced plastic with a constant cross-section by pulling reinforcing fibers, wetted with resin, through a heated shaping die, the reverse of extrusion, which pushes material through a die instead. Early patents for pultrusion-type processes were filed by J. H. Watson in 1944 and M. J. Meek in 1950, and a 1952 patent by Rodger B. White led to the first commercially pultruded products, made by the Glastic Company of Cleveland, Ohio. German engineer Ernst Kuhne independently developed a similar epoxy-resin-based process in Germany in 1954, while American inventor W. Brandt Goldsworthy, who worked with unsaturated polyester resins, patented his own version in 1959 and is widely regarded as the inventor of pultrusion; his patent helped promote the technology across the industry. The technique has continued to develop since, including a 2008 modification by the German company Thomas GmbH plus Co, called Radius-Pultrusion, which allowed curved profiles to be manufactured for the first time.