Our monthly webinar series “Innovation Insights” continues, as IACMI Chief Commercialization Officer Dale Brosius moderates discussions on recent technology advancements that industry may not be fully aware of.
On Tuesday, January 18 at 12PM ET a one-hour series of presentations was held from IACMI members and partners, where they provided background on new technology, products, and the key advantages provided, as well as application examples.
Attendees heard from:
- Andrew Hedger, Senior Director of Business Development, Magnum Venus Products
- Next Generation Mold Making with Thermoset 3D Printing
- Thermoset materials are revolutionizing large-scale additive manufacturing, and MVP’s Reactive Additive Manufacturing (RAM) system takes full advantage of these benefits. This presentation will showcase recent breakthroughs and real-world application of 3d-printed thermoset molds and tools. Thermosets contain polymers which chemically react in the curing process, cross-linking between printed layers to form powerful bonds, resulting in stronger, more heat tolerant products. Many key advantages are due to the open layer time, which creates the ability to pick and place items into the print, print through a previous path, print multiple objects at one time, and allows for secondary bonding of materials.
- Next Generation Mold Making with Thermoset 3D Printing
- Vern Benson, Technical Fellow in Composites Automation, Northrop Grumman
- Composites – Automated Stiffener Forming (ASF)
- Stiffeners can account for nearly 50% by weight of typical Composite Structures Assemblies, and generally account for more than 70% of the cost of the structure. Automation of stiffener fabrication without compromising on design flexibility to minimize weight has traditionally been difficult and has resulted in manual layups. Northrop has pioneered an Automated Stiffener Forming (ASF) process to allow high rate manufacturing of popular stiffener shapes (stringers, frames, spars).
- Composites – Automated Stiffener Forming (ASF)
- Doug Bradley, Composite Engineering Manager, Michigan State University
- New Capabilities in Rapid Automated Tape Layup at SuRF
- Traditional fiber placement and tape layup technologies have been developed and utilized in the aerospace sectors since the mid eighties. While these technologies exhibit remarkable improvements in precision and speed of layup for low volume build components over other more labor intensive composite processes, these technologies are not suitable to support high volume automotive applications. Recently, SuRF has added capabilities at the Corktown location in a partnership with Fill (Austria) that enable long continuous fiber reinforced composite components in automotive volume applications. This presentation will discuss capabilities recently established in Automated Tape Layup at SuRF.
- New Capabilities in Rapid Automated Tape Layup at SuRF
