Low Cost, Agile Methods for Tooling for Manufacturing Composite Parts

Due to the increasingly negative impact on DoD budgets and the critical need for future air platforms, the USAF has issued a mandate to significantly reduce the development and escalating procurement costs of Carbon Fiber Composites intensive air platforms. Traditional aerospace autoclave manufacturing processes, utilized to produce carbon fiber composite parts are limited to very slow cycle efficiencies and utilize costly materials that require long lead order times of up to 10 months. Tasked with evaluating the enabling technologies that achieve this goal, the WP-AFRL team has identified an innovative yet commercialized manufacturing technology developed for the automotive industry and commercialized on the current General Motors Corvette platform. Located in Tacoma Washington, Globe Machine Manufacturing Company has developed the manufacturing system known as RapidClave® that is utilized by the automotive industry to produce their carbon fiber applications for the Corvette. For the demands and durability requirements of high volume automotive production, hard steel tooling is required for each part at a cost up to 100X a comparably sized aerospace part. This proposal seeks the initial funding necessary to develop the low cost, agile tooling technology, capable of being processed and realizes the cost benefits of the RapidClave® system.