Cygnet Texkimp celebrates 50 years in fiber handling, processing technology

Cygnet Texkimp’s automated winding cell was developed as part of the ASCEND innovation program. Source (All Images) | Cygnet Texkimp

Composites technology company and custom machine builder Cygnet Texkimp (Northwich, U.K.) is celebrating its 50^th anniversary.

The company (originally named Texkimp) was founded in 1974 in Cheshire, U.K., by textile engineer Colin Smith and his wife Janet, to manufacture fiber unwinding equipment — creels — for the traditional textile and technical fiber industries. Over the last five decades, Cygnet Texkimp has expanded its portfolio to include a full lifecycle of solutions for the composites and technical fiber industries, including prepreg, coating, slitting, filament winding, automation and end-of-life recycling solutions.

“From the very beginning, our work has always been innovative and ambitious,” says Cygnet Texkimp CEO Luke Vardy. “Without exception, our intention has been to engineer the best technical solutions in the world; to be courageous in our work; and to try new and novel ways of doing things in the belief that we can achieve better results for our customers, more efficiently, more accurately and more reliably than ever before. The technical excellence and entrepreneurial instinct shown by our founders and their colleagues 50 years ago are still fundamental to our culture and our approach to engineering today.”

In the early 2000s, a steady increase in the size and weight of fiber bobbins the company was being asked to accommodate into its creel designs meant that existing handling technologies were no longer practical. Unable to find the handling equipment it needed in the market, the company set about designing its own. The move would prove to be a key milestone in the company’s evolution. As well as automatic creel loading and unloading solutions, Cygnet Texkimp has gone on to develop systems to wrap, pack and palletize bobbins of fiber, radio frequency identification (RFID), barcoding, vision and data capture capability, robotics and auto guided vehicle (AGV) systems. The company notes this as a successful venture, with automation and handling solutions now making up around a third of its revenue annually.

During the 2009 global recession and a slowdown in the market for large capital equipment, the company worked with a long-term U.S. customer to develop an improved solution to process carbon fiber prepreg. Cygnet Texkimp says that this would be the first of more than 30 prepreg processing machines it has delivered in the last 15 years and would herald the birth of a dedicated wide-web engineering team which has been responsible for developing new and distinctive solutions for coating, slitting and laminating, as well as prepreg.

Over the next 10 years, the company continued to strengthen its position in the fiber processing market with a series of novel products providing previously unreachable capability:

• In 2017, as a result of a successful Knowledge Transfer Partnership with the University of Manchester, the company unveiled its 3D or Nine-Axis Winder, a robotic 3D winding machine capable of creating complex composite parts.
• In 2021, Cygnet Texkimp launched its high-precision Slitter Spooler machine, which is used predominantly in the aerospace and automotive industries to slit and wind carbon fiber prepreg into high-accuracy tapes.
• In the same year, the company unveiled its Direct Melt Impregnation Thermoplastic Composite Line, a commercially available thermoplastic composite line capable of using standard polymer to create high-grade thermoplastic composite prepreg on an industrial scale.
• Also in 2021, Cygnet Texkimp joined forces with fellow engineering company Longworth to bring to market Longworth’s DEECOM recycling solution specifically for the composites industry. In 2022, the company unveiled its materials reclaiming and recycling solution to address the environmental impact of waste in global composites, featuring this system. 
• In 2022, the company also launched the Multi-Axis Winder, a high-speed, large-scale winding machine designed to wind large, continuous and curved parts for the aerospace industry.
• In early 2023, the company’s state-of-the-art Innovation Centre was officially opened at its U.K. headquarters in Cheshire, offering a place where customers and partners can witness the true scale and capability of its machines through hands-on trials and the opportunity to develop processes with the support of its expert team.
• Also in 2023, the Multi Roll Stack was introduced as a short-footprint, energy-efficient prepreg processing machine designed to deliver significant savings in terms of capital investment, running costs and energy requirements.

Cygnet Texkimp’s Multi Axis filament winder.

“The breadth of new and highly innovative technologies we’ve brought to market in the last decade reflects the success of our ongoing program of collaborative partnerships and our focus on developing solutions driven by market need,” Vardy explains. “Collaborative partnerships have led to us carving a niche in the high-tension winding market for electric vehicle motors and creating a fully automated system to manufacture large volumes of hydrogen pressure vessels at rate, supporting moves by global governments towards zero-emission policies for transport.”

What is Cygnet Texkimp’s vision for the future? “With more technologies currently in development and more partnerships set to be announced in the coming months, we’re excited about what our future looks like,” Vardy notes. “But we also want to make sure we grow at a rate that allows us to remain innovative and responsive to the evolving needs of our valued customers, many of which have worked with us for several years, and to continue developing the tailored solutions they require to secure competitive advantage in a demanding and fast-moving market.”

“We recognize that our success over the last 50 years has only been possible because of the trust and commitment of our customers and partners and the hard work and dedication of every member of our skilled team, from those who have devoted entire careers to our company, to those who are just starting out here,” he continues. “I would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who has worked with us over the last 50 years for helping to make us the company we are today.”

Cygnet Texkimp will host a reception to celebrate its 50^th anniversary at JEC World 2024 on March 6^th from 12-2 p.m. at Booth L85 in Hall 5.