Oxford Advanced Surfaces Ltd (www.oxfordsurfaces.com) is on target to treat one million ft² of composites with its patented ‘Onto’ adhesion promoter, which replaces sanding or abrasion in surface preparation.

By removing abrasion as a surface preparation for composites, Onto delivers improvements in quality and cuts the processing time by up to 90%, resulting in significant cost savings and productivity improvement.

Terence Warmbier, Oxford Advanced Surfaces head of business development, said: “We are well on track to reaching the one million ft² milestone, and the composites industry is increasingly seeing the advantage of surface preparation with-out having to sand or use other forms of abrasion. It is also cheaper, quicker, safer and better for the environment.”

Sanding or abrasion as a surface preparation is slow and labour-intensive, risks damaging parts and is dirty (all the dust that is removed needs to be extracted and workers need to wear respiration PPE).

OAS’s patented Onto technology has already been proven in demanding sectors, including automotive, transportation, motor-sport, defence and sporting goods, and it is designed to exploit the potential of modern materials.

It is said to remove all the current issues with surface preparation with a simple process that works for composites and a wide range of engineering plastics.