ABOUT COMPOTOOL

History

Compotool Managing Director Paul Hackett was a manufacturer of composite parts and was constantly frustrated with long autoclave cooks. Some up to 40 hours. Adding to that frustration was the short out life of the low temp tooling prepreg. The root cause of these issues is the epoxy tooling block. So Paul set out to develop a tooling board that could be heated to high temperature with a CTE similar to Invar. 

The Creation

In 2014 Compotool was released to the market “Ticking all the boxes”  Finally solving the legacy frustrations. Compotool is sand and limestone mixed together and then pressed at 2000psi and cured at over 1000°C to form a soft calcium silicate ceramic board. It is an inorganic material so can be considered to be green and friendly to the environment and can be easily recycled back into the earth. It contains no VOC’s and has a recycle waste code of building rubble. 

Compotool presents a radical new approach to tooling. It is a material that allows you to speed up your manufacturing process while giving you a better quality tool. Saving you time and money. 

The Result

• A coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of 6 microstrains per °C (6 x 10^-6 K^-1) or 3.3 microstrains per
  °F (3.3 x 10^-6 F^-1)
• Maximum temperature of 800°C (1500°F)
• The thermal stability allows for parts to be fully cured in one single cook cycle eliminating the need for a post cure
• Compotool can be used with any resin system. Benzoxazine (BOX), Bismaleimide (BMI), Polyamide, Epoxy, Polyether ether ketone (PEEK)   
• Priced similar to Epoxy block