Innovative Concepts for Low Cost, Light Weight, Highly Durable, Tooling for Composite Structural Component Fabrication

Renegade Materials Corporation in collaboration with Janicki Industries (JI) proposes to develop a low-cost, precision master tool using Renegade"s out-of-autoclave (OOA), high-temperature bismaleimide (BMI) prepreg material as the tooling face sheet. The testing and evaluation of these materials by Renegade in collaboration with Janicki will include: BMI formulation effects on resin rheological properties and degree of cure; effects of ply thickness on laminate consolidation; effects of composite cure schedule on thermo-mechanical properties; and the effects of cure schedule and master tool type on laminate porosity. Results of these tests and evaluations will show that the cure schedule for the BMI prepreg requires optimization for OOA processing in order to produce the requisite composite properties at minimum cure cycle temperatures. Once optimized, the OOA processed BMI face sheet will be combined with a rapidly-processed, underlying support structure that will be unlike an industry-standard eggcrate structure. Combining Renegade"s OOA BMI with Janicki"s novel tool design will 1) remove the limitation of scale imposed by autoclave size restrictions, 2) increase the available industrial supplier pool for the manufacture of BMI composite tools, and 3) reduce cost and lead times for the manufacture of composite tooling.