3BRAID™ The milestone in achieving commercial viability of 3-D braiding technology The world's most capable 3-D rotary braiding machine with fully automated, computer-controlled operation, completed at 3TEX. The 9-module braider will employ up to 576 braided yarns and 144 axial tows and will be capable of producing relatively large, variable cross section preforms for composites. Shape of continuous preform can be changed on the fly, by sequentially utilizing different pre-programmed, computer-stored braiding patterns. These unique manufacturing capabilities, combined with high production speed of the braider, may manifest a breakthrough in industrial 3-D braiding.

With 3TEX 3BRAID™ you can...

• Eliminate delamination as a failure mode.
• Achieve maximum flexibility in the continual production of a complex shape preform.
• Have no limitations in the number of complex shapes in design.
• Change the shape of your product on the fly during production.
• Increase the speed of your production.

This new 3D braiding, named 3BRAID®, was developed and patented by 3TEX engineers for use in today's production of high-performance, complex composite structures.

With 3TEX 3BRAID® expect:

• Larger preform cross sections
• Faster production speeds
• Varying product shapes all in one continous production run
• Pultrusion preforms (details here)

The new 3TEX multi-module 3D braiding machine:

• Employs full occupancy of all horngear wings, thus increasing fiber end quantity compared to other existing 3-D rotary braiders of similar size.
• Uses easily controllable rotary gripping forks to transfer fiber carriers
• Minimizes machine size with respect to the braid size due to the optimized fiber carrier transfer mechanism.
• Easily scales up by increasing the number of standard modules

In addition to that:

• Machine configuration of modules can be optimized to the product shape. 
• Braiding patterns for various complex shape preforms are designed by simply "locking" specified rotary gripping forks.
• Any number of stored pre-designed braiding patterns are simply recalled and used selectively in a continuous manufacturing process.