December 7, 2022 – IACMI members University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI) and Northrop Grumman Corporation were honored at the Defense Manufacturing Conference (DMC) this week with the Defense Manufacturing Technology Achievement award. The award recognizes advancements in Composite Laser Ablation Surface Preparation (CLASP), a process that makes light work of composites preparation with a faster, more reliable athermal laser ablation process and is expected to save the U.S. Air Force tens of millions of dollars per aircraft.
Partnering with the U.S. Air Force and Albers Aerospace, researchers had a scale-up objective to transform a handheld prototype into a set of production ready tools. Proper surface preparation is critical to achieve a strong bond for structural capacity of composite aircraft parts. Current surface preparation methods use manual sanding that is extremely time consuming and has variability issues, leading to structural integrity uncertainties. CLASP is an athermal ablation process which allows fine control of carbon fiber exposure on Polymer Matrix Composite surfaces.
The goal was to improve surface preparation time by 25%, but engineers far exceeded that by achieving a 100X increase in surface preparation processing rates. The automated process resulted in reduction of technician variability and rework.
In the category of Cost Reduction, the Air Force ManTech award recognizes that this substantial increase in processing rates will translate into significant dollar savings for the Department of Defense.