By Diana Bowley of the Bangor Daily News: John Pepin of Pepin Associates Inc. in Greenville has been known to dress up in a white disco outfit and grind his hips John Travolta-style to promote his product called DiscoTex. While Pepin is making a name for himself with his snappy dance routine, it is his inventions, especially a carbon fabric composed of discontinuous fibers which can be stretched into complex shapes for use by the aerospace industry, that are making the headlines. Boeing Co. has expressed an interest in the material and the U.S. Navy recently supported a $2 million earmark in the 2008 Defense Appropriations bill for the company to further develop the composite material. The bill was approved by the Senate earlier this month. "In the aerospace business, it takes a lot of financial support to qualify and get a material flying on an aircraft, so this earmark is critical to us," Pepin said recently. "It’s important to get this kind of support to allow our product to be introduced into this type of market." Pepin credited Greenville Town Manager John Simko, the Maine congressional delegation and their staffs for providing support for the government funds. The $2 million will allow the company to build the capability and infrastructure necessary to make and sell the product, Pepin said. "The real payoff is when we actually produce the product and sell it into the marketplace," he said. When that occurs, as many as 40 jobs could be created in the Moosehead Lake region, he said. Pepin, who operates his high-tech research and development business in Greenville’s industrial park with four employees and another small facility at the Sanford airport with one employee, says the lightweight fabric, which has been in the development stage for seven years, will help the industry. Its advantages include the fact it will allow the formation of highly complex shapes more easily and with less expense and also enable designers to develop complex designs that would be difficult to make otherwise. Additionally, the DiscoTex design is not limited to carbon fiber. It can be glass, quartz or ceramic fiber and can be used in other applications, such as high-temperature engine components and aircraft radomes, which protect radar antennas, according to Pepin. To make the registered trademark material, Pepin uses spools of purchased aerospace-grade fiber. The fiber is cut into 1.3-inch pieces, like link sausages, on a specialized machine Pepin and his associates developed. The pieces of fibers are overwrapped with a white continuous fiber to join them and the fiber is then placed on a loom to be weaved. The white fiber, which is water-soluble, is then dissolved, leaving the end fabric, which is ready for the resin process. The process has taken years and years of research and development, according to Pepin. "We don’t always win, but we keep trying and we learn from our experience," he said. "The development work we do is new, so there is a lot of failure involved, and you just have to learn from your experience and keep persisting." |
 John Pepin of Pepin Associates (right) helps project engineer Elizabeth Goodine fit carbon fiber fabric into a custom-made machine to be stretched in order to test the fabric's strength and stiffness. The fabric, which Pepin calls DiscoTex and has been in the development stages for seven years, has potential use in airplane manufacturing and "anyplace where you need to form complex shapes," Pepin said at the company's Greenville office Friday, June 15, 2007. The U.S. Navy recently supported a $2 million earmark in the 2008 Defense Appropriations bill for the company to further develop the composite material. (Bangor Daily News/Bridget Brown)  Pepin Associates' fabric is different from others currently available in that it is weaved from aerospace-grade carbon fiber of discontinuous lengths rather than continuous lengths, making it more moldable.  Pepin Associates project engineer Elizabeth Goodine prepares to stretch stacked layers of the carbon fiber fabric that the company makes at their workshop in Greenville on Friday, June 15, 2007. (Bangor Daily News/Bridget Brown) |