PORTFOLIO

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 …

03/16/2022 (Miamisburg, OH) Spintech Holdings, Inc. has moved into a new 34,000 sq ft. facility located in Miamisburg, Ohio. Previously located in a 19,500 sq. ft. facility in Xenia, Ohio, this move marks one year since the launch of their new composite parts manufacturing division, Hawthorn Composites, and enables further expansion of its two primary divisions, Smart Tooling & Hawthorn …

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 …

02/08/2021 (Xenia, OH) Spintech Holdings, Inc. has been awarded two United States Air Force Research Laboratory STTR Program contracts with partners the University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI), Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing company, and a Leading electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) OEM as part of AFWERX’s Agility Prime Initiative. The first contract with UDRI and a leading eVTOL …

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 …

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 …

Watch a demonstration of a Smart Tool used to create a co-cured reinforced skin panel. Because Smart Tools are rigid at layup, but elastic for extraction, material can be laid up directly onto the Smart Tool, and can be demolded from trapped geometry parts. Smart Tooling provides formable, reusable composite tooling solutions for manufacturing composite parts with complex geometries for …

Why Out of Autoclave? Moving the cure cycle out of an autoclave to a standard oven has a lot of benefits, including reducing capital & operating expenses, as well as saving manufacturing space. How It Works with Smart Tools 1 | Tool Assembly & Closure To begin, the Smart Tool with lay up is placed into the bottom of the …

Have you ever got to the end of a first-article part and realized something is wrong. You look back and find a little mistake during the design/processing phase. You realize your team got wrapped up in the big picture and forgot about the details. Think about a football game. When you boil it down to its most basic level, the …

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 …