SBIR-STTR Award

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 escalatingprocurement 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 technologydeveloped 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.Low Cost,agile,Tooling,RapidClave,Rapid Processing,Required

Low Cost agile tooling methods, processed in Globes RapidClave curing system, has been identified as a key enabling technology by the AFRL team to achieve its cost reduction mandate for next generation Carbon Fiber intensive air vehicle structures. For this Phase-II effort, Globe will modify the Phase-I, lab scale tool system for processing within a RapidClave machine. Globe will then complete the process characterization studies in a "real world" manufacturing process environment. With the modified lab scale tooling system, Globe will confirm Phase-1 data results, cure prepreg materials on the sub-scale wing skin tool plate and complete physical property testing to compare RapidClave vs Autoclave material properties. In addition, Globe will design-build and commission a "scaled up" version of the Phase-I tool system that is capable of processing larger parts in a RapidClave system. A scaled up, low cost tool plate(s) of the Phase-I wing section will be used for the Phase-II large scale process studies. Globe will repeat a portion the Phase-I process characterization studies to capture data and assess the scalability for larger, full size applications such as fuselage sections and wing sections. Using his approach, Globe will demonstrate cycle time improvements over traditional autoclave processes.