Composites 101: Tutorials at CAMX

While CAMX generally holds its educational tutorial sessions on Monday before the show opens, this year a second slate of sessions will be held today. Three interesting sessions are available from 2-5 p.m. Note that access to each three-hour session must be purchased separately at the registration desk, up until 2 p.m.

Today’s tutorials include:

“Entering the Digital Factory Era: Thinking AI, Implementing AI,” D224, by Avner Ben-Bassat, Plataine: As Industrial IoT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are becoming increasingly central to the world of advanced manufacturing, there is a growing interest in their potential impact on aerospace & composites manufacturing. This tutorial will first introduce and discuss key elements of these technologies, and then dig deeper into various techniques of leveraging them in composites production. The talk will involve real-life examples, including implementation challenges and resulting benefits.

“Manufacturing Composites: Processing & Getting the Part You Designed,” D220, by Ronda Coguill, Montana Tech & Brianna Clark, Montana Tech. Designing a structural composite is only the first step in actually manufacturing and processing to then obtaining the part engineering designs. This tutorial will cover the composite material systems and the process selection needed to optimize the part one desires to build in production. Proper material selection, manufacturing process selection and implementation of manufacturing plans will be covered as well as production processes to help ensure no surprises when the final structural composite part is removed from the tooling, mold or die.

“Epoxy Resin Chemistry: The Science and Art of formulating Epoxy Resin Systems,” D222, by Roger Tietze, PART Consulting. Epoxies have characteristics that provide properties suitable for a variety of purposes, which can be explained by the chemistry of the epoxide functional group as well as the curing reaction with hardeners. This overview of epoxies will present the chemistry, manufacturing, application and marketing of the epoxy class of thermosetting materials.