Applied fiber

COMPANY PROFILE

2014

Applied Fiber

+1 850-539-7720 | www.applied-fiber.com

Applied intellectual fibre goes deep

Editorial: Colin Chinery

Applied Fiber Founder and CEO, Richard Campbell has built a world leading business in synthetic fiber cabling technology and application, with offshore oil and gas the key market. “There’s considerable demand for light weight products in deep water installations and other areas offshore; our focus is on the enabling technologies that help make this conversion possible.”

US-based Applied Fiber which Mr Campbell heads, is a world leader in the fiber cabling industry, driving technological advances in every major cable field from aerospace to ocean floor.

In sectors where performance and reliability are critical, Applied Fiber develops and manufactures finished high strength synthetic fibre cable assembly products.

From micro-medical device actuation cables to large heavy lift cables for offshore marine

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applications, the Company has become the most trusted global provider of high performance terminations and engineered systems.

STEEL OUT-PERFORMED High strength synthetic fibres are utilised across most industries owing to their unique properties.

“With today’s high performance fibres, cables can be engineered to outperform steel in many regards,” says Mr Campbell.

“These maturing fiber cable

products and our technology apply to many industries and applications, since it carries potential to replace tension members of many forms.

Primary examples would be steel wire, rod, and chain. Like that of composite structures, these are high performance alternatives to steel, often providing lower weight, safer handling, faster cycle times, or extended fatigue life for example.

Where they make sense is where the performance value outweighs the inherent difference in cost.”

Applied Fiber Offshore oil and gas, which it entered in 2005-2006, is the prime market. “There’s a wide scope of opportunity here for the application of synthetics. Other key markets for the company are defence and mining.

These are areas where performance, reliability, and safety are important and our specialised technology can make a visible impact.”

As a precociously talented teenager in the early 90’s, Richard Campbell’s power and motion concepts were more modest. “I started as an inventor/entrepreneur, inventing things out of self interest but truly passionate about business and particularly manufacturing. It wasn’t until I was

14 that I realised these inventions represented my best opportunity to build a sustainable manufacturing business.

“The first invention I decided to research and develop was an active role stabilisation system for automobiles to improve safety and performance. This quickly led to the discovery of Kevlar fiber and the unique properties in the form of a cable. I became fascinated with the fiber materials and how they could be applied in many applications. A follow-on invention was a bicycle wheel system that utilised these synthetics in cable form to replace the steel rod spokes. The aim was to

create a high performance wheel set with uniquely high impact resistance and low rotational mass. In other words, I was looking to create a wheel with the highest strengthto-weight ratio, and the design incorporated synthetic fiber cables to do this. However after working with the fibre manufacturers and fiber rope and cable companies to better understand the fiber products, I quickly realised there was no viable technology to take this invention to market. The technology simply didn’t exist – the terminations were way too large, too heavy, and too expensive.

They lacked length stability, good breaking efficiency, and to top it off

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there was no reliable methodology for high volume production.

“But at that age I could see no barriers; it was simply a stumbling block. So I began working on developing a new cable termination and assembly processing technology.

We spent the next four years making and breaking thousands of cables, seeking patterns for what could not be simulated, and systematically developing a means around each of the fundamental issues.”

time as we had a lot riding on a technology that didn’t exist and the capital clock was ticking. Fortunately, things came together at the right time for the company and the market – lightweight wheels had become one of the bicycle industry’s top performance purchase trends and by using advanced fiber materials, we had a product that was truly unmatched.”

It was a commercial and engineering success – with millions of terminations running millions of

tension cycles each year and no visible signs of fatigue. “But at some point I realised there are only so many versions of wheels that can be made and the market was becoming oversaturated with wheel options.

Where could advanced tension member technology it go next? I kept coming back to the fact that other manufacturers surely have had the same issues I faced when designing a system around synthetic fiber – this technology must have a much deeper need across many industries.”

AN INDUSTRY FIRST “We had a small crew tasked with the R&D and production of other products while I was working feverishly in the background on engineering the system components and developing the business. In 1997 we were finally successful, coming out with the industry’s first mass produced terminated synthetic cable assembly - a lightweight, costeffective spoke that we incorporated into our advanced wheels. It was an exciting but admittedly intense

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“We have watched Applied Fiber’s termination technology for the rope and cable industry grow tremendously over the last 20 years,” says Dr. Forrest Sloan of Kuraray’s LCP fiber unit Vectran® “From sensitive applications in medical and robotics, to extremely large end-uses in civil engineering and heavy lifting. Their innovative, highly efficient and compact connection assemblies are replacing more traditional and much larger spliced solutions.”

Applied Fiber Now the goal was to build an enabling technology allowing high performance fibres and ropes to be utilised in untapped areas and markets.

After a year of market research and business planning, “It was back to the lab, and this time in a much greater scale,” recalls Campbell. “The first cables that we were making for the bicycle wheel - one millimetre, and only a half-ton in breaking force at best. We had previously built a great piece of technology for a very small and simple design, but now we had to figure out whether the technology applied to other common fibres and constructions. Most importantly we had to understand whether it could reliably be scaled to larger sizes and loads.

“The short answer was it didn’t, and we had to develop a tremendous number of tests to develop new technology across a broad spectrum of configurations.” So in 2003

Applied Fiber brought in working capital, infrastructure and senior management to further refine the technology and see where it could be applied to industry as a whole.

“We started out with a number of defence and aerospace-related applications. But we soon realised that there’s not much you can do to drive the decision making process in these applications, change is very difficult, and the consensus building sales process was both slow and

risky. And for a young company that’s hard to absorb.

“It took several years to get a good grip on Applied Fiber’s unique marketplace reality – to understand how and where we fit in a vast and diverse space.” So Applied Fiber took another and this time long term directional adjustment; the evolution of business model and offerings tailored around the industry and where synthetic fiber cables were gaining traction.

For ropes and cables, the three most common fiber chemistries (polyolefin, polyamide, and polyester) have also produced high-performance alternatives that are 3-4x stronger than commodity grades. For polyolefins the advanced type is HMPE (High Modulus PolyEthylene), for polyamides it is para-aramid, and for polyesters it is LCP (Liquid Crystal Polymer).

These three advanced fibers have similar strength and stiffness, however different attributes arise from their underlying chemical natures. HMPE has the lowest density of the three, and aramids the highest temperature resistance. LCP fibers offer a unique combination of stability and durability across a range of chemical, thermal, and service environments.

Kuraray is innovating the world with market leading materials Genestar (PA9T) and KURARITY (a thermoplastic acrylic) are two of them.

Kuraray invented both to fulfill a need that no other material could. Each product now caters to unique markets and provides better materials for better products. Kuraray is initiating innovative discoveries around the world, from medical devices to food packaging, Kuraray is contributing to the betterment of the world.

www.kuraray.co.jp/en

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“A fundamental component of our business is the synergistic alignment with those in our industry – fiber, rope or cable, and regional distributors. Our entire business and offering portfolio is built on enabling technology… which effectively open doors and opportunity for everyone in the industry supply chain. We’re passionate about advancing the fiber tension member industry as a whole - so by design we built the business to support the current players, not compete with them. It has taken many years to develop trust in this model and our capabilities, however it has raised Applied Fiber to a level we could not achieve autonomously. We utilise these powerful channels to scale our organisation’s presence across many markets and applications globally.”

The company’s neutral positioning combined with is unique technology and service offerings, systems engineering capabilities, and unmatched application experience are how Applied Fiber has continued to

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strengthen its position as the industry leader.

HUGE DIVERSITY Applied Fiber has been able to get into just about every major fibre rope market, which creates diversity in both their product portfolio and design expertise. While the core technology is consistently applied, how each of these products are designed and produced to suit the specialised needs of aerospace, medical, defence, architecture, commercial marine, or oil and gas, as examples, are very different.

A major component of evolution is the scale or size of the company’s offerings. “The greatest value for synthetics comes from cables that are large in size, such as 25 millimetres with over 50 tonnes of load capacity to several hundred millimetres that can be thousands of tonnes of load capacity; products that can materially impact the safety, productivity or even operating cost of major production assets such as in offshore, mining, and other heavy

equipment industries.”

With continued scaling of the technology Applied Fiber has gone from products that solve discrete challenges on the inside of everyday products such as in medical devices and automobiles, to developing large and structurally critical components for some of the biggest and most valuable production assets.

And with this shift from products that are relatively small, lightweight and transportable, to products that are inherently bulky, heavy, and require local support – emerges a new business model that requires a presence where rope is made and used.

“While our current products are made in a single facility, to commercialise large high capacity termination technology, we must be closer to where these products are fabricated and used. This includes not only regional fabrication centres but truly remote production capability such as aboard offshore vessels,” says Campbell.

Applied Fiber

“Our absolute aim over the next few years is to build the foundational equipment and standardise the technology to replicate our business and our process anywhere, addressing one of the fundamental barriers that separate steel and synthetic fiber products, and primarily serving the unique demands of offshore oil and gas.

“To standardise the technology in a way that works efficiently and consistently with existing rope products is a rather significant undertaking, but important to making the transition easy on our partners and customers. This means considerable testing and data generation to determine the appropriate processing parameters for each of the major rope sizes and configurations and for each of the major players.

By pre-engineering our processes around current industry products and standardising our offerings, we can begin breaking down the complexity and building a scalable business

are creating an emerging market for Applied Fiber and the fiber rope industry as a whole. Our business is targeting heavy and offshore industries, and greener energy is a big component.”

For example in oil and gas, if there’s less top side production and a greater use of subsea processing, there’s a growing demand for this performance technology – since everything on the floor must be lifted and lowered, and terminated fibre ropes can significantly improve the productivity, depth capability, payload capability, and overall cost.

For the fast growing deep sea arena, Richard Campbell sees Applied Fiber technology as a key enabling component. “There is considerable demand for light weight products in deep water installations and other areas offshore; our focus is on the enabling technologies that help make this conversion possible.”

In this, Applied Fiber’s partnership with British-based Parkburn Precision

platform.”

Handling Systems is already having a significant impact. One of the top product development priorities revolves around the work with Parkburn to deliver the offshore industry’s first deep water winch and crane system, an area that’s getting significant traction with

TARGETING RENEWABLES While the Green agenda has both a positive and negative effect on his business, Mr Campbell says the impact overall “is very favourable. Renewables

technology barriers being addressed.

“There’s a tremendous synergy between our products especially as they relate to offshore and deep water lifting. What Parkburn has done with their unique winch design opens up new market spaces for fiber cable, making high performance synthetics far more practical for deep water applications. It is a truly remarkable technology.”

HIGH DEMAND ENVIRONMENT With industry leading experience, expertise, and a technology setting new standards, “Applied Fiber’s people and innovation culture,” says Campbell “are the corner stone of our success.

“We have become world class at designing critical products, processes, and solutions in very short order. This has put Applied Fiber in many places in many ways, which builds market creditability and trust in our capabilities and termination technology. As a business born and built on innovation, maintaining speed and agility with control are critical. This makes for a high energy, fast paced environment with plenty of challenges, but it is also what makes us who we are.”

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