5 year Pontis: a big thank you!
Last month Pontis Engineering celebrated its five year anniversary. What began as a two-men start up company in 2007 has now grown into a fully fledged international player in the technological development of composite products.
To celebrate this milestone, a festive meeting in Rouveen was held for all staff who contributed to the success of the company over the years. Founders Sjef and Dirk Jan were offered a photo mosaic with hundreds of images of Pontis, together forming the new Pontis logo.
From here, we would like to thank the team and our partners and clients whose confidence and inspiration have allowed us to build up the business. We highly appreciate your committed and loyal partnership over the past five years and we hope to continue our cooperation in the years to come.
Hole-in-one for future engineers
At Pontis we invest in the future: in young, talented engineers who are eager to bring the composites industry to a higher level. In the Netherlands Pontis already is a recognized training company, kicking off the careers of many interns and graduates. Just recently we delivered 2 fresh graduates to the market.
Pontis USA last month sponsored the 2012 WSU Composites Material Engineering fundraiser golf outing. Winona State University has the only undergraduate composites program in the US, and the yearly golf outing has been providing funds to the program since 2002. The earnings are used to fund scholarships for students at the Composite Materials Engineering (CME) School at WSU. The event has attracted corporate sponsorship from across the nation and the proceeds are helping staff engineering positions around the globe.
Set in the beautiful Mississippi River region in Minnesota, USA, Managing Director Nick Althoff looks back on a successful event: “We are enthusiastic to support the Winona State University’s Composites Material Engineering program. We applaud the work they do in educating the next generation of composite engineers. Local, national, and international companies, including Pontis, will continue to benefit from the students who graduate from this program.“
Turnkey “pre-form” moulding solution
Prefabricated laminate packages reduce in-mould cycle time
Pontis Engineering, specialist in the development of advanced composites, presents its latest innovation in moulding & tooling solutions at HUSUM 2012. Through a unique process called “pre-forming” rotor blade manufacturers are enabled to reduce in-mould cycle times and increase output significantly.
The solution is as simple as effective: availability of the main mould is increased by largely moving the rotor blade production process to sub-moulds. Stacked layers of glass are applied on separate tools. These “pre-forms” come in handy modules which can easily be loaded into the main mould. Then the individual modules are smoothly joined, resulting in a rotor blade of the highest quality and durability.
Director Dirk Jan Kootstra says: "We are very proud to present this innovative method at HUSUM this year. Pontis provides a full turnkey pre-form solution including all necessary advice, training and hardware and we are confident that this innovative approach will set a new standard for rotor blade manufacturing".
China is betting on the Dutch
China is the biggest and fastest growing wind-turbine producer in the world, partly thanks to wind-turbine technology and rotor-blade design from Holland.
The numbers are impressive. In 2011, China installed 18 Giga-watt; almost half of the global installed wind capacity (41GW). While most onshore areas are getting saturated, China is now focussing on offshore projects. First test farms are installed and China will construct 5 GW of offshore wind projects by 2015. By 2020, China will construct 30 GW offshore projects, making it the largest country for offshore wind-power development. “Most of these wind-turbines will be produced locally, based on Dutch designs”, says Martijn van Breugel, Pontis representative in Beijing, China.
The value of weight: saving 8 digits in wind energy logistics
The transport of rotor blades is a costly and risky operation. With the worldwide growth of the wind energy market logistics issues are becoming increasingly important. Pontis researches logistics optimization using composite solutions in order to design innovative transport fixtures for rotor blades. One of our recent studies shows that weight reduction in extendable trailer design allows dual-blade transportation solutions, resulting in 8-digits saving in logistic cost, increasing transportation flexibility and easing workflow.
The largest number of manufactured and transported blades is in the 45-48 m class, which are currently impossible to transport in a dual-blade mode respecting the 40 metric tons limitation imposed by the DOT for the blade + trailer compound. Replace the traditional trailer’s steel-made telescopic-beam with a modern, stronger and lightweight composite solution may increase the allowed payload, enabling implementation of the dual-blade transportation solution.
Preliminary FEA calculation run on a hybrid Carbon-Glass Fibre solution shows a potential 70% reduction in weight of the telescopic-beam, resulting in an increase of 3.5 metric tons in the payload. Other hybrid glass fibre/ steel combinations optimized for the beam’s stiffness increase were also explored, saving more than 2.5 tons and doubled stiffness when compared to the original steel-made benchmark.
Please contact us for more information about Pontis’ logistics services.
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