Smart Tooling provides formable, re-usable composite tooling solutions for manufacturing composite parts with complex geometries for the aerospace and defense industries.
Today we’ll be demonstrating the fabrication of a co-cured wing utilizing 3 smart tools combined with dry carbon fiber sleeving, carbon fiber broad goods, and resin transfer molding of industrial grade epoxy resin.
The mold and smart tool must be cleaned, inspected and properly prepared for the layup process to begin.
Smart tools are made from shape memory polymers which allow them to be rigid for layup and elastic above their transition temperature. In this application, the smart tools will act like elastic bladders during cure, allowing the smart tool to be pressurized to drive out air and excess resin.
The layup begins with hinge pocket build ups followed by pulling a pre-measured braided, biaxial, dry carbon fiber sleeving from A&P Technologies over the smart tool. 1 Sleeving is applied to each of the three smart tools.
Now, the three Smart Tools are clamped together and noodles are placed at the intersections of the smart tools, held in place with a compatible tackifier spray, to make them flush with an outer skin layer.
Prior to placing the clamped smart tools into the cure mold, 2 layers of quasi-isotropic carbon fiber fabric, called QISO, were laid into the mold to form the lower skin of the control surface. We then place the laid up smart tools into the mold on top of the lower skin and one layer of the upper skin fabric is pulled over top of the tools, this is followed by placing custom noodles into the trailing edge and then pulling the 2nd layer of the upper skin over the 1st layer and securing it in place.
O-rings are placed into the lower clamshell cure mold and then the upper clamshell is placed on top and secured with bolts.
Next, an intermediate seal plate is attached to the cure mold and then vacuum bags are pulled through the smart tools and sealed to the seal plate with vacuum tape. This setup provides a vacuum & pressure barrier between the internal tool cavity and the dry carbon fiber preform. This will allow us to maintain vacuum & pressure throughout the process.
A 2nd set of end plates, called pressure plates, are now attached to the mold. This will allow the internal cavity of the smart tools to be pressurized to 75 psi of pressure after they become elastic, creating a reverse auto-clave like effect inside the mold.
The cure mold is now placed in the oven and plumbed for infusion.
Once the infusion process is complete and the mold is still warm, it is removed from the oven and the vacuum plates are removed, in reverse order, granting access to the smart tools.
Next the still elastic Smart Tools are extracted with low force from the trapped geometry co-cured composite wing. After extraction, each Smart Tool is placed into the pre-heated reforming mold, vacuum bags are pulled through the Smart Tools, the upper lid of the reforming mold is secured, the vacuum bags are now sealed to the mold, and vacuum is pulled to reset the geometry of the Smart Tools. Once cooled, the now rigid Smart Tools are ready to begin the next production cycle.
Our Shape Memory Polymer Smart Tools are designed to be aerospace-grade RIGID epoxies at room temperature, and highly FLEXIBLE elastomers when heated, eliminating the need for expensive, laborious, tedious, dirty, and challenging solutions such as melt-out foam, metal breakdown tools, rubber bladders, or washout tooling.
Smart Tools improve quality, reduce labor hours, decrease consumables, and increase throughput – essentially, Smart Tools enable the manufacturing of composite parts better, cheaper, and faster.
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