Aerospace
NASA selects Sierra Nevada for Space Station Cargo transport contract
These Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-2) contracts are designed to obtain cargo delivery services to the space station, disposal of unneeded cargo, and the return of research samples and other cargo from the station back to NASA.
Read MoreNASA composites project could save airlines money
NASA developed a new process for stitching together large sections of lightweight composite materials to create damage-tolerant structures.
Read MoreTop composites blog articles of 2015
Blog articles about additive manufacturing, 777X composite wings and colored carbon fiber all generated your interest in 2015.
Read MoreCarbon Fiber: Refiguring the supply/demand equation
CW editor-in-chief Jeff Sloan returns from Carbon Fiber 2015 in Knoxville TN, US, with news that carbon fiber demand will outstrip supply by 2020, prompting expansion in the 2018-2019 timeframe that could include sources in China.
Read MoreNew Year’s resolutions
CW contributing writer and composites industry consultant Dale Brosius, who presently serves as chief commercialization officer for the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI, Knoxville, TN, US), imagines an automotive world where composites are king, then — more realistically — calls on the industry to resolve to make it capable of worthy service.
Read MoreTurnkey manufacturing systems: Part-per-minute thermoplastic composites
Pinette Emidecau Industries’ (PEI, Chalon-sur-Saône, France) leads a consortium of providers that are collaborating on the Quilted Stratum Process (QSP), a means to accelerate thermoplastic composites processing in the auto industry.
Read MoreTurnkey manufacturing systems: Simplifying automated HP-RTM
Having offered turnkey systems for composites since the 1990s for sheet molding compound (SMC), long fiber thermoplastic (LFT) and glass mat thermoplastic (GMT), Dieffenbacher (Eppingen, Germany) now has automated systems for high-pressure resin transfer molding (HP-RTM).
Read MoreTurnkey manufacturing systems: Automated RTM for aerospace
German Aerospace Center’s (DLR) Center for Lightweight Production Technology site in Stade, Germany, has developed EVo, an automated production line capable of 100,000 complex composite parts/yr.
Read MoreTurnkey manufacturing systems: Materials, markets and maturation
Automated production cells promise affordability and less risk in scaling up composites production, but are they really the path forward?
Read MoreCW Ideas in Action
Ideas are just ideas until someone does the hard work of putting them into action and seeing results. CW's editors, therefore, inaugurate an annual review of Ideas in Action, celebrating a handful of hot concepts that could make those who conceived them "household names."
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