Agile Metal Tooling for High-Rate Manufacturing of Composite Parts

This proposal is aimed at a new technology that would facilitate agile and affordable production of ORBs.  Specifically, work will be carried out on a new metal tooling technology for fast, cost-effective, and flexible manufacturing of composite parts.  Tooling is a critical element in the manufacturing of state-of-the-art composite structures.  High-rate composite production tools are generally metal tools because of their ability to maintain desired surface finish and dimensional accuracy.  Fabrication of metal tools is an expensive and cumbersome process involving lengthy lead times.  As such, changes and iterations over part design are very difficult when metal tools are of concern.  In this work, we will use our robotic sheet metal forming system to expeditiously fabricate lightweight, metal tools.  Prototype composite parts will be processed (by vacuum infusion and layup) using the fabricated tools.  The prototypes, which are closely vetted with customers, will be characterized and benchmarked against current tooling technology.