3D Printed Carbon-Carbon for Sustainment Assurance

Manufacturing capacity for carbon/carbon (C/C) composites represent one of the greatest assets available to the US hypersonic community, but the manufacturing methods in place to produce these components are leading to a future of extremely challenging and high-cost sustainment for hypersonic weapon systems. This is driven by a few key factors: Consolidation of C/C manufacturers High start-up and fixed-cost manufacturing methods that make follow-on acquisition extremely expensive. Legacy C/C manufacturing processes are challenging to quantify and control. Low initial acquisition numbers that cannot independently support an industrial base. Expanding reliance on foreign suppliers. These challenges are not dissimilar from the challenges faced when acquiring low-volume castings and forgings, and the solutions to both problems are likely to be in the form of a new technology that changes the underlying manufacturing cost and logistics equations. Mantis Composites has developed a way to 3D print continuous fiber Carbon/Carbon composites. This enables a combination of rapid acquisition, low fixed-cost, and low-startup cost, allowing for reduced design and development timelines while reducing the cost of future sustainment. 3D printing eliminates many of the pinch points that make sustainment of Carbon/Carbon components so challenging by defining a digital process that can be easily replicated without hard tooling, knowledge, or equipment configuration. This 3D printing process is already in place and operational, including in-house C/C conversion and densification. However, while densification is currently performed in-house on these components, it represents the largest risk, cost, and yield driver for final parts. The 3D printing process requires inherently unique densification capabilities given the lack of hard tooling during processing, and this requires process-specific densification in order to create a quality end component. In this proposal, Mantis Composites has provided a development pathway for a combined novel resin and additive system to reduce the choke point of densification in the Carbon/Carbon manufacturing pipeline. This will allow C/C parts with shorter timelines and substantially decreased cost. Reducing the densification timeline will substantially improve the adoption and sustainment capabilities of this material system, allowing C/C components to be specified in development programs and logistics models while avoiding the intense risk and time pressure present using existing manufacturing methods.