SMART TOOL CAULS CASE STUDY Manufacture of high performance, carbon fiber, reinforced epoxy components with tight radii, included corners has been a long standing manufacturing challenge faced by the aerospace industry. The primary difficulty associated with manufacture of these components is in the initial lay-up of the carbon/epoxy prepreg material into the tight corners. Both manual operators and automated layup …
Co-Cured I-Beam Using Bladder Smart Tools
PROBLEM – How to fabricate a flight quality co-cured I-Beam composite structure in an environment that enables high volume manufacturing OPPORTUNITY – Generate a viable solution that will produce a high quality composite with an accelerated curing cycle using Smart Tools that act as bladders during cure. SOLUTION – A PLC controlled, self-heating, and self-pressurizing cure mold was combined with …
UAV Inlet Duct Case Study | Smart Tools That Act as Mandrels During Cure
PROBLEM – Fabricate a 52” long by 12” dia. inlet duct using a clean tooling solution with the lowest up front capital cost and equal or better composite part cost. OPPORTUNITY – Deliver a mandrel solution that requires lower up front cost than a multi-piece metal mandrel and can be deployed with both prepreg and dry carbon fiber with resin …
Layup Directly On The Composite Bladder | Y-Shaped Vent Composite Part
Learn about how carbon fiber prepreg can layup directly onto a Smart Tool bladder to create complex and trapped geometry composite parts.. Previous Process Originally, this aerospace-grade Y-shaped vent was manufactured in two halves that were joined after cure. Each of these halves required carbon fiber prepreg to be laid up into the female cavity and could not have layup …
Y-Shaped Vent Tube | Complex Geometry Composite
Previous Process The baseline process was to lay-up this aerospace grade, Y-shaped vent tube in two halves into the female cavity of the cure mold that were joined for cure. This frequently resulted in the laminate being pinched and uneven. It also forced the lap joints to be staggered over the same area, resulting in a thicker composite part with …
Alternative to Washout Tooling | Non-Structural Duct Case Study
PROBLEM – Fabricate a non-structural duct in a quick, clean, and efficient process without an autoclave or washout tooling. OPPORTUNITY – Create an oven cure solution that will produce a high-quality composite duct with a reusable Smart Tool. SOLUTION – A Smart Tool that acts as a bladder during cure was combined with a OML cure mold to create an …
Trapped Geometry Demolding – Benefits of Smart Tooling
One of the major benefits of Smart Tooling is the ability to demold from trapped geometry. In the video below, we demonstrate how Smart Tools that act as Bladders are rigid during cure, and elastic at extraction. This elasticity allows the Smart Tool to be extracted from a composite part with complex or trapped geometry. Once extracted, the Smart Tool …
Trailing Edge Control Surface WITHOUT The Use of Foam
Smart Tooling uses exclusive shape memory polymer tooling technology to produce a composite multi-chamber trailing edge control surface with co-cured spars without the use of foam core. Traditionally, a composite trailing edge control surface required the use of foam fabricated to a knifepoint to mold the trailing edge because traditional tooling methods could not mold composite with such small, and …
Co-cured Composite Structures Using Smart Tooling
How Smart Tooling can offer better quality, lower cost, and throughput advantages over traditional fabrication methods for co-cured composite structures. Using Smart Tools to Create Multi-Chamber Control Surfaces Using Smart Tools to create co-cured composite structures such as a multi-chamber control surface improves part quality by allowing the customer to lay-up on male tools. Traditional fabrications require layups to be …