May 13th, 2019
Final site visit today! Can’t believe the final presentations are two days away and our trip is almost over 🙁 After having two casual days, I was NOT excited to dress business casual again. SGL wasn’t far luckily and after this we just had group project work!
SGL is a carbon fiber company that is one of the smaller companies we have visited these past two weeks! When we got there, we were a little early so we had to wait for the presentation. Our presenter was Matian, who actually was taught by Dr. Feick at Pitt through the University of Augsburg and Katz exchange masters program! He gave a really great presentation with a lot of facts about SGL as a whole. Here are some of the facts from today:
- SGL focuses on the production of different forms of graphite as well as carbon fibers for internal car parts
- The types of graphite include synthetic graphite and expanded natural graphite
- The manufacturing process at SGL follows four main steps : 1. Mixing, 2. Shaping, 3. Carbonizing, 4. Graphitizing and the process will last around 2-4 weeks
- Some of the industries that SGL covers are Solar, LEDs, Semiconductors, Battery/energy storage, and involvement in the chemical industry
- The company began 150 years ago, they now has 31 productions sites, 5,000 employees and have spread to 80+ countries
In the presentation, Matian mentioned that SGL views itself as 3-4 years ahead of its competitors in technological advancements in carbon fiber production, and based on the complexity of the plant we toured I could believe it!