Source | LICT

The Aerospace & Aviation Sector Skill Council (AASSC, Bengaluru, India) and Link Institute of Composites Technology (LICT, Halol, Gujarat, India) have signed a 2-year partnership to train aerospace workers in composites manufacturing processes. The agreement pairs AASSC’s certification standards with LICT’s technical training in materials such as prepregs, aiming to build a pipeline of certified workers for India’s aerospace and aviation sector.

LICT and AASSC say the shortage stems in part from how specialized composites work has become — techniques like vacuum infusion setups and handling pre-treated fabrics require hands-on skills most new workers haven’t encountered before entering the field, even as composites make up a growing share of aircraft structures.

Under the partnership, LICT will provide the technical instruction while AASSC issues certification. The initial phase includes three courses (each enrolling 20 students):

• a 24-hour foundational course on aerospace composite materials and manufacturing processes running September through December 2026.
• a 48-hour intermediate course on prepreg materials running October 2026 through January 2027.
• And an 80-hour advanced prepreg materials course running November 2026 through February 2027. 

Graduates will receive diploma certificates issued by AASSC bearing the logos of LICT, AASSC and Skill India. The organizations say additional courses are planned as the partnership continues.

The agreement also includes plans to establish what LICT and AASSC describe as India’s first Centre of Excellence in Composites, intended as a hub for advanced training, research and capability development. 

Separately, AASSC will run Training of Trainer programs under the agreement, with instructor certification valid for 2 years, in line with National Skill Development Corp. (NSDC, New Delhi, India) and India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation guidelines.

Also read, “E-Learning Composites Academy Forms Composites Training Alliance With India’s LICT.”

Source | Airbus

On Aug. 19, Airbus (Toulouse, France) announced the start of construction for the 6,221-square-meter extension to its Belfast A220 wing facility. The project will support production ramp-up and is part of a wider multi-million-pound site investment plan.

Scheduled for completion in the first half of 2028, the extension will expand the facility’s wing manufacturing footprint and advanced composite capabilities. It will house a third autoclave alongside specialized wing tooling and cranage to support the A220 production ramp-up to 13 aircraft/month by 2028. 

Alongside the extension, Airbus will continue to modernize site infrastructure.

“Enhancing our wing facilities is a direct investment in the future of A220 wing production here in Belfast, building the capacity required to meet the growing demand for this aircraft,” says Anthony Rouse, head of Airbus Belfast plant and site. “This commitment is also reflected in our ongoing skills development, including bringing onboard 40 new apprentices who will start in September this year [2026].”

As the exclusive global manufacturer of A220 wings, Belfast is central to the A220 program. The site is internationally recognized for pioneering the patented resin transfer infusion (RTI) manufacturing process used to construct the A220’s advanced composite wings. This technology makes the structure approximately 10% lighter than traditional aluminum equivalents, directly reducing fuel burn and carbon emissions.

For related content, read “Airbus Presses Forward on Next-Gen Narrowbody as Boeing Timeline Slips.”

Source | AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings

AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings (Waukegan, Illinois) and TAP Air Portugal have successfully completed operational trials of a lighter aircraft basecoat technology that can reduce coating weight by up to 26 kilograms per aircraft, thus supporting the airline’s ongoing focus on operational efficiency, fuel savings and lower emissions.

The trials, carried out using AkzoNobel’s Aerobase UPD formulation, demonstrated that the system is able to reduce total basecoat film thickness by 36% compared with a traditional two-coat application process. The basecoat also maintains durability, appearance and finish quality standards required for commercial aviation operations.

Field testing on a TAP Air Portugal A320 aircraft achieved a 24-kilogram weight reduction. Following these results, a second A320 has also been recoated, with rollout plans being put in place to extend the lightweight basecoat across the fleet. The lighter coating technology is expected to contribute to annual fuel savings of approximately 428.5 tonnes, with an estimated reduction of approximately 1,353 tonnes of CO₂ emissions annually across the fleet.

The Aerobase UPD formulation builds on AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings’ Aerobase platform through formulation and application improvements designed to improve film build control, sag resistance and process repeatability in real-world paint shop operations.

Using a validated cross-coat application technique, Aerobase UPD is designed to achieve the required hiding power and finish quality through a single basecoat application cycle, eliminating the need for a second full basecoat layer and associated flash-off stages. The simplified application process also provides operational productivity benefits for applicators by removing one whole paint cycle.

The enhanced formulation also provides approximately 40% greater sag resistance compared with the traditional two-layer system for improved consistency and repeatability across varying operational paint shop conditions and applicator experience levels.

Aerobase UPD is certified to AMS3095 standards for global mixed-fleet maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) operations and integrates with the upgraded Aerobase activator and existing Aerobase hardeners, enabling straightforward implementation within existing paint shop processes.

Source | Boeing

Albany Engineered Composites (AEC, Rochester, N.H., U.S.), a segment of Albany International Corp., has reached an agreement with Boeing (Arlington, Va., U.S.) to continue composite fuselage frame manufacturing for the 787 Dreamliner.

Under the agreement, Albany continues to manufacture about 300 unique composite fuselage frames for the 787 Dreamliner, including forward sections 41 and 43 and aft section 47. Albany has produced composite fuselage frames for Sections 41 and 43 since Boeing’s original award in 2014.

“We are excited to continue this partnership, built over more than a decade of successful collaboration,” says Chris Stone, president of AEC. “Albany is fully committed to supporting the ramp of the 787 program with the consistency, quality and reliability our customers have come to expect from Albany. We remain focused on delivering high-performance components at scale while continuing to advance our manufacturing efficiency and operational excellence across the business.”

The Boeing 787 work is performed at Albany’s facility in Salt Lake City, Utah.

AEC designs and manufactures advanced engineered composite components for engine and airframe applications in commercial and military aircraft, missiles and unmanned vehicles. The company is also partnering with A&P Technology that will combine RTM and braiding expertise for aerospace and defense, and an agreement with Lockheed Martin to advance hypersonic systems.

The U.K.’s Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) has committed £70 million to 18 engineering teams developing aircraft for extended stratospheric operation.  The funding, announced under ARIA’s Enduring Atmospheric Platforms program and reported by The Engineer, targets aircraft able to continuously supply 300 watts of power to a communications payload for a full week while holding station above the U.K. Success would establish a new infrastructure layer between Earth and space, delivering connectivity to underserved regions in the U.K. and worldwide.

Part of the Structural Solar team, Limosaero is developing solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Source | Limosaero

One project, led by David G. Lidzey at the University of Sheffield (Sheffield, U.K.), uses carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) as a structural substrate for perovskite photovoltaics. The full team also includes members from AMRC Sheffield, solar-powered drone/UAV developer Limosaero (Cambridge, U.K.) and University of Loughborough.

The project, titled “Structural Solar: Integrating perovskite PV onto carbon fiber for high specific power,” is one of eight teams funded under Technical Area 1 (Enabling Technologies), which backs materials and power technologies intended to de-risk development of a full stratospheric platform. It aims to develop high-performance, spray-cast perovskite solar cells (PSCs) integrated onto CFRP substrates to power enduring
atmospheric platforms.

By using low-temperature, solution-processed materials, this approach targets a specific power of up to 10X photovoltaic efficiency per unit mass compared to conventional gallium arsenide (GaAs) technologies while offering disruptive cost reductions. The resulting PSC/CFRP composite panels will then be engineered to enable long-endurance, solar-powered flight by combining established manufacturing processes with innovative thin-film coatings preventing impacts from moisture infiltration.

The approach builds on Lidzey’s earlier published research combining perovskite photovoltaics with CFRP substrates. That work showed this approach produces materials with high mechanical strength that also generate electrical power. The goal is multifunctional structures that are lightweight yet provide energy-harvesting capacity in aerospace and automotive applications. Lidzey’s group has since demonstrated spray-coating perovskite cells directly onto CFRP, including curved surfaces, reaching efficiencies of about 14%.

For a high-altitude pseudo-satellite (HAPS) aircraft, embedding power generation into a load-bearing carbon fiber composite skin removes the added mass of a separate photovoltaic layer — an advantage for the endurance target of the ARIA program.

ARIA is backing a range of approaches, says Rico Chandra, program director for Enduring Atmospheric Platforms at ARIA, “from fixed-wing solar aircraft to designs nobody predicted, including aircraft that fly on spinning wings instead of propellers.” Sixteen of the 18 funded teams are based in the U.K.; two more, based in Australia and the U.S., are relocating operations to the U.K. as a result of the award.

Source (All Images) | Axalp Technologies

Axalp Technologies (Olten, Switzerland) has designed and fabricated custom folding propeller blades for Dufour Aerospace’s (Zurich) Aero-200 tilt-wing aircraft. The blades are made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) and produced in-house by Axalp.

For Dufour’s folding propeller mechanism, Axalp designed an optimized blade structure to meet tight constraints on geometry and weight. The company’s in-house software tools allowed the design team to evaluate the full tradespace so the propeller could be optimized at the system level rather than in isolated areas. Axalp’s rapid prototyping capabilities then produced a batch of the custom blades to meet Dufour’s ground and flight testing schedule.

The composites-intensive Aero-200 in flight.

Dufour’s folding propeller system for the Aero-200 was developed to improve cruise efficiency during long-range missions. Large propellers are needed for hover and vertical takeoff, but they create additional drag once the aircraft transitions into forward flight. The Aero-200 addresses this by folding its outer propellers during cruise while the inboard pair continue providing forward thrust, a configuration intended to maximize aerodynamic efficiency and extend operational range.

“We’re proud to support the optimization and fabrication of this folding propeller system,” states Axalp in a LinkedIn post. The aircraft platform is aimed at medical transport, search and rescue, and other missions.

CW has reported on several other composite components across Dufour’s Aero-200 (formerly Aero2) platform beyond the propeller blades. The aircraft’s all-composite airframe is supplied by Connova AG, while Aerolite AG produces composite structural components for the nacelles and tail, and WAG Wernli AG produces composite brackets using sheet molding compound (SMC) materials, replacing the aircraft’s original aluminum versions. 

Source (All Images) | Addcomposites

In my blog post on the damage lightning causes to painted composite panels, I summarized a study by Bigand, et al. on painted carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) skins, which showed that for identical laminates (13 plies of prepreg) with identical expanded copper foil protection, internal delamination went from near-zero on unpainted panels to 412 square centimeters on ones with a thick coat of industry-standard polyurethane paint. This damage, caused by a surface-confinement effect, is decided in the first few plies of the laminate and also can be difficult to measure accurately in ultrasonic testing (UT) C-scans, which must be performed from the rear face to avoid the metal containing layers at top.

Lightning strike damage in Fig. 4 from Bigand, A.; Espinosa, C.; Bauchire, J.-M. “Destructive and Non-Destructive Analysis of Lightning-Induced Damage in Protected and Painted Composite Aircraft Laminates” © 2025 by the authors, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

If lightning strike damage to CFRP parts is decided at the top of the laminate, what would a conductive layer specifically designed to control that region look like, and what would it require from the manufacturing process? To me, the answer is a specifically designed layer that is placed precisely so that the controlled conductive architecture serves not only as a lightning shield but also as a damage sensor, de-icing heater and digital record of itself. What follows is my exploration of this engineering position, based on the published results of various groups (see the references at the end).

Established toolkit vs. an architected layer

Lightning strike protection (LSP) for composite aircraft is a mature field dominated by metal options: expanded bronze, copper or aluminum foil, woven wire mesh, conductive surface films and metallized fibers, fabrics and veils. These are most often applied as a surfacing layer and qualified against aerospace lightning environment standards including the SAE ARP5412 waveform set, ARP5414 zoning (Zones 1A, 1B, 2A and so on) and ARP5416/EUROCAE ED-105 test methods that back the certification requirements per FAR Parts 23, 25 and 27.

The issue discussed here is not with the materials, but their integration. As the Bigand et al. results clearly show, the protected laminate behaves completely differently depending on its exterior surface, thus they should be designed and built together.

Figure 1. Conceptual rendering showing traditional copper grid conductive layer placed within the laminate and co-cured with the carbon plies.

Metal mesh and foil LSP are typically co-cured with the structural laminate, either placed by hand or using automated fiber placement (AFP) as the outermost ply. Most part manufacturers today use prepregs or surfacing films with pre-embedded LSP material, laying these as the exterior ply (e.g., first down in a female/outer mold line tool). However, their role in the laminate is only protection. Supplied and placed as a uniform sheet, they provide the same conductivity everywhere.

With AFP, the amount of conductor present and how it’s connected can be set locally by varying ply count, course overlap and/or gaps between courses. Thus, conductivity becomes a designed variable rather than a fixed property of the sheet. The part can now include high-conductivity zones that act as charge sinks where a strike is likely to attach and thinner, more linear paths that steer current away elsewhere.

Figure 2. A lightning strike protection (LSP) layer is defined by its sheet resistance (ohms-per-square, Ω/□) where lower sheet resistance means more conductivity. AFP can tailor that locally through ply count, course overlap and programmed gaps, so that the layer is most conductive where strikes attach (Zone 1 per SAE ARP5414) and carries the current cleanly to the airframe bonding or grounding points.

This isn’t speculative. Hybrid metal and CFRP laminates have been designed and built using a robotic AFP cell¹ to achieve dual-layer conductive/insulating LSP stacks and tested to validate performance.² Built using Addcomposite Oy’s (Helsinki, Finland) AFP-XS robotic cell, the conductive layer was applied within the same automated sequence as the structural plies, orienting it where needed and tailoring connectivity across the part.

Recent work has shown that tailoring the through-thickness conductive architecture directly changes the lightning strike damage response.³ Meanwhile, automated placement for laying overlapping conductive courses are established prior art. This is a design-architecture problem, precisely the kind of high-dimensional layout that modern AI-assisted design tools are well suited to optimize for a given part, load case and strike zone.

One placed layer, multiple functions

A tailored conductive architecture in a laminate can also be designed to provide additional functions such as heating and sensing. Using a precise architecture and placement thus extend protection cost into an operational and performance advantage.

Heating. The same integrated conductive interlayer can carry current to produce heat for de-icing, for example in leading edges. Metallized thermoplastic nonwovens have already been integrated into fiber-reinforced composites and shown to work as both electrothermal heating elements and sensing layers in one part.

Figure 3. Conceptual rendering showing how a conductive LSP layer can also be used for Joule heating for de-icing control surfaces (top) and as a sensor (bottom) identifying location and size of damage (red) where local resistance changes.

Sensing. A conductive grid placed to a known geometry is a calibrated grid. Because the location of each conductive ply is known, changes in the electrical and electromagnetic signature can be analyzed to determine damage location and severity in the structure underneath. Real-time self-sensing structural health monitoring (SHM) has been demonstrated in AFP-manufactured parts, and a purpose-designed conductive veil grid has been used as both a structural interlayer and a multi-point damage sensor in CFRP and glass fiber (GFRP) laminates. Turning the LSP into a sensing grid is the direction Addcomposites is pursuing in the final phase of the EU TOSCA project.

Digital thread. Every course, gap and overlap AFP lays down is recorded. That as-built map lets you: (1) verify that the conductive architecture was manufactured as designed, (2) interpret the sensing grid against a known baseline and (3) define the post-strike inspection envelope. Note, the Bigand, et al. study mentioned that UT inspection tended to under report lightning strike damage. This approach provides a path to mitigate that.

Thus, one placed layer weighs in across multiple benefits — LSP, sensing, heating and improved inspection — but only once in grams.

Increased fleets using CFRP, converging path forward

Lightning strikes on commercial aircraft are already routine — once per year or every 30,000 flight hours on average. However, the total number of airframes exposed to that risk is increasing. For example, advanced air mobility (AAM) fleets of eVTOL aircraft are expected to grow substantially over the next few decades, with forecasts ranging from roughly 7,000 to 30,000 aircraft in service by 2050. Like conventional commercial airframes, most eVTOL structures rely heavily on CFRP for flight control structures, but also in wing and fuselage components. Each of these aircraft must still meet LSP requirements while carrying as little added weight as possible. As these and future next-generation single-aisle aircraft — also projected to use increased amounts of CFRP — scale in the coming decade, a layer that protects, heats and senses no longer offers just a marginal gain but starts affecting the weight budget across entire fleets.

This is a design proposition, and concept laminates must still earn zoning per the aerospace standards listed above. The Bigand, et al. study did not address manufacturing, thus any error in drawing from its results is ours. However, literature is already converging separately on each of the pieces  we’ve presented; our contribution and assertion is they should be designed and placed as a single, tailored, multifunctional layer.

References

¹M. M. A. Ammar, B. Shirinzadeh, P. Zhao, Y. Shi, “An approach for damage initiation and propagation in metal and carbon fibre hybrid composites manufactured by robotic fibre placement,” Composite Structures 2021, 268, 113976. doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2021.113976

²H. Zhu, K. Fu, H. Liu, B. Yang, Y. Chen, C. Kuang, Y. Li, “Design a dual-layer lightning strike protection for carbon fibre reinforced composites,” Composites Part B 2022, 247, 110330. doi.org/10.1016/j.compositesb.2022.110330

³V. Kumar, W. Lin, Y. Wang, R. Spencer, S. Saha, C. Park, et al., “Enhanced through-thickness electrical conductivity and lightning strike damage response of interleaved vertically aligned short carbon fibre composites,” Composites Part B 2023, 253, 110535. doi.org/10.1016/j.compositesb.2023.110535

⁴P. Latko-Durałek, M. Misiak, D. T. Ufaysa, N. Tao, B. Przybyszewski, P. Durałek, D. Rutkowska, M. Kurkowska, A. Anisimov, O. Bergsma, R. M. Groves, A. Boczkowska, “Metallized thermoplastic nonwovens as integrated heating elements in fibre-reinforced composites,” Materials Today Communications 2026, 53, 115313. doi.org/10.1016/j.mtcomm.2026.115313

⁵Y. Ji, C. Luan, X. Yao, Z. Ding, C. Niu, N. Dong, L. Cheng, K. Zhao, J. Fu, “Real-time in-service structural health monitoring method based on self-sensing of CF/PEEK prepreg in automated fibre placement (AFP) manufactured parts,” Composites Part A 2025, 194, 108925. doi.org/10.1016/j.compositesa.2025.108925

⁶O. C. Zehni, A. Kandemir, “Multifunctional carbon-veil grid design for impact damage monitoring and tolerance in GFRP and CFRP laminates,” Materials & Design 2026, 263, 115608. doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2026.115608

About the Author

Pravin Luthada

Pravin Luthada is CEO and co-founder of Addcomposites Oy. He began his career as a space scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) manufacturing composite components for satellites and launch vehicles, where the cost of conventional AFP equipment convinced him there was room for a cheaper approach. He co-founded Addcomposites to build plug-and-play AFP toolheads that mount on standard industrial robots. The company is democratizing advanced manufacturing by making composites automation accessible and affordable.

Rod Zastrow, Bye Aerospace CEO, holds the newly awarded FAA Special Airworthiness Certificate for eFlyer 2, Serial No 001. Source | Bye Aerospace

On Sept. 9, Bye Aerospace (Denver, Colo., U.S.) announced that it is progressing its flagship all-electric training aircraft, eFlyer 2, with Special Airworthiness certification awarded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

A detailed aircraft inspection occurred at the Centennial Airport near Denver, where Bye is completing flight preparations. The FAA meticulously reviewed eFlyer 2’s airframe, electric propulsion system, instruments and other functional systems to confirm its safety for operation.

“Every major milestone in an aircraft program is earned, and this one is the result of intense effort and dedication from a talented team that is passionate about what we do,” notes Rod Zastrow, CEO of Bye Aerospace. “We’ve worked hand in hand with the FAA since 2016 to help advance the certification framework for electric aircraft. In just a year, we’ve built and tested this all-electric aircraft, and receiving the Special Airworthiness Certificate is an important validation of that work. We look forward to beginning flight testing and continuing our progress toward certification.”

The Bye team completed the structural build of the eFlyer 2 in July 2026, following several months of rigorous structural testing and propulsion system validation using a truck mounted test rig called “The Beast.” Since then, engineers and technicians have been conducting final aircraft systems integration, further electrical system validation and operational ground testing before beginning the flight test program.

With months of ground testing complete, Bye Aerospace is now focused on final aircraft inspections, operational readiness activities and preparing to launch a phased flight test program that will progressively expand the aircraft’s operating envelope.

CW has covered the composites-intensive aircraft across the whole program timeline:

• Bye Aerospace Expands eFlyer Operations to Larger Hangar (March 2019) — Early growth milestone, still calling the aircraft by its former name, Sun Flyer.
• Bye Aerospace Closes $10 Million in Funding (July 2020) — Funding round enabling work on the first eFlyer 2 production-conforming prototype.
• Bye Aerospace Unveils Eight-Seat All-Electric eFlyer 800 (May 2021) — Launch of the larger eFlyer 800 twin-turboprop-class program.
• Rheinland Air Service Orders Bye Aerospace eFlyer 800s (July 2021) — First European MRO/reseller partnership and purchase deposits.
• Bye Aerospace All-Electric eFlyer 800 Program Advances (Jan. 2022) — Backlog growth across the eFlyer lineup.
• Bye Aerospace eFlyer2 Approved for Flight Test Certification (Feb. 2023) — FAA G-2 Means of Compliance milestone for the composite-fuselage eFlyer 2.
• Bye Aerospace’s eFlyer 2 Achieves FAA Acceptance for Functional Hazard Analysis (Sept. 2023) — Next certification milestone toward Part 23 Amendment 64.
• Bye Aerospace Gains Momentum With 30 eFlyer Aircraft Purchase (Jan. 2024) — Order book growth past 880 units and $1.4 billion.
• Initial Build Has Begun for Bye Aerospace eFlyer 2 Fixed-Wing Aircraft (Sept. 2024) — Construction start on Serial Number 00001, the all-composite prototype.
• Bye Aerospace Selects Composites Approach to Build eFlyer 2 (Dec. 2025) — Most recent coverage: manufacturing partner named for the first structural composite eFlyer.

Source | Cambium

ApexFrame 5000 is a phthalonitrile-based film adhesive recently launched by Cambium (El Segundo, Calif., U.S.). It is engineered for high-temperature, nonstructural bonding of polymer films and metallic foils. It can also be used to bond fiber-reinforced composites, though it is currently optimized for film/foil bonding applications rather than structural composite bonding. Cambium is developing a dedicated structural adhesive variant for that use case, expected in the near future

ApexFrame 5000 delivers sustained operational performance up to 315°C, with short-duration performance up to 427°C. The system is solvent-free, room temperature stable and requires no freezer storage, reducing logistics complexity and total cost of ownership for manufacturers.

“A customer came to us with a challenge that existing adhesive technologies couldn’t solve: bonding performance in extreme thermal environments for demanding aircraft and drone applications,” explains Cambium CTO James Griffin. “By combining our materials expertise with a rapid development approach, we delivered ApexFrame 5000, a high-temperature laminating adhesive built for defense applications.”

The launch reflects Cambium’s core operating model, which is to take a material from discovery through qualified production at speed and scale. This direct path from formulation to production-ready material is increasingly critical for customers in aerospace, defense and space, the company acknowledges. 

ApexFrame 5000 is available now as an unsupported film adhesive in standard roll widths of 12' (300 mm) and 38' (965 mm), with additional widths and carrier options available upon request.

Source (All Images) | Cambium

Cambium (El Segundo, California, U.S.) was founded in 2019 by CEO Simon Waddington and CMO Stephan Herrera, both formerly of biotech firm Evolva. The company currently has 250 employees and develops advanced polymers and composite materials for aerospace, defense and other high-performance sectors, but is also targeting broader markets. Its most recent messaging notes that Cambium integrates AI-driven materials discovery, rapid product development, industrialized qualification and flexible manufacturing into a single operating system, compressing time and cost from invention to qualified production.

Shortly after its founding it established this domestic production as well as defense-related R&D support including a completed contract with the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) and a DARPA collaboration aimed at replacing structural titanium with ultra-lightweight polymers.

In December 2025, Cambium acquired SHD Composites (Sleaford, U.K. and Mooresville, N.C., U.S.), a company well known for its innovative, high-quality products, agility, customer support and fast response time. Now a Cambium company, SHD has maintained its leadership, adding previous Cambium board director Brett Schneider as president of SHD and Cambium Composites. SHD has also maintained its production sites, including at its U.K. and U.S. headquarters, an additional U.S. facility in Oklahoma and one in Slovenia.

In January 2026, Cambium closed a $100 million Series B funding round led by 8VC (Austin, Texas, U.S.), with participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, Veteran Ventures Capital and MVP Ventures. With SHD Composites, Cambium has now established a global innovation and manufacturing supply chain, and in 2026, SHD Composites announced a slate of new developments:

• Wide-format UD prepreg, film coating lines, accelerating development cycles and supporting more ambitious composite designs.
• MTC521FR, a new flame-retardant clear epoxy prepreg for visually critical carbon fiber components requiring certified fire performance.
• MTC700 toughened epoxy prepreg with capability up to 200°C and a dual-cure profile to meet motorsport and other high-performance manufacturers’ needs.
• Bio-based, FST-compliant FR308 resin for next-gen aircraft seating with Safran Group and others in the EcoSuite project.
• Quadrupling of its Mooresville, N.C. facility in the U.S.
• CEM101 cyanate ester prepreg with enhanced service temperature and dielectric performance for aerospace, space, defense and motorsport.
• SFX740-LS, SFX740-LW and SFX740-HF surface films for lightning strike protection, low-temperature out-of-autoclave (OOA) cure and no postprocessing after molding.

These show recurring themes of high performance, ease of processing and accelerated development cycles for more ambitious composite designs in aerospace, space, defense and motorsport. These are indeed the central pillars to Cambium’s approach. But it has a vision for much more.

From biotech to bio-enabled composites

Chief informatics officer Tim Gardner’s journey reflects that of Cambium to some degree — moving from biotech to its current “bio-enabled” and AI-focused approach to speed development and innovation in composites and other advanced materials. It also helps to provide a landscape and frame of reference for Cambium, as there really hasn’t been a company like this in composites before.

Cambium’s technical capabilities.

“I joined Cambium in 2024, and am relatively new to composites,” Gardner explains, “having spent most of my career in biotech. I actually started in mechanical and aerospace engineering, with an interest in robotics and automation. But I ended up building out capability to biosynthesize chemicals for a company that was genetically engineering yeast to produce oils from sugarcane. We scaled that up to a 1.2 million-liter production volume [tank capacity] in Brazil, but the company struggled economically because it’s hard for bio-based materials to compete with the cost of oil-based products.”

There are other factors that make bio-based materials production challenging, Gardner adds. “Biology is good at exquisite design of molecules that operate in low temperature or room temperature [RT] regimes, but it’s difficult to engineer those materials for tailored performance because that requires redesigning cellular enzymes and metabolism — a very hard problem. For example, some of the compounds relevant to high-performance applications like aerospace are toxic to microbes or involve oxygen-sensitive biochemistry that doesn’t work under normal bioprocessing conditions.”

By the mid-2000s, says Gardner, “I had started to get more interested in the software that underpins effective R&D organizations. What makes organizations capable of being agile and effective at discovering solutions to technical problems? I ended up starting a software-as-a-service company in 2014 that developed cloud-based software for experimental and process design, data integration and analytics.” He then sold that company to Siemens and spent the next 3 years at a large company in biotech. “Along the way, I reconnected with the cofounders of Cambium — Stephan Herrera [now chief marketing officer] and Simon Waddington, CEO. We all came from a similar background — bioproduction of chemicals and biosynthesis — and I had gotten to know them through that part of my career. I reached out to Stephan 3 years ago because I saw what they were doing. At the time, Cambium included ‘Biomaterials’ in its name, but they were really a materials company trying to drive extreme performance in aerospace applications. I was inspired because that was essentially where I started my career, and I had always wanted to get back to spacecraft and pushing the boundaries of what was possible.”

Cambium combines biotech, digital technologies/ simulation, machine learning (ML) and AI to accelerate solutions in advanced materials with a focus on manufacturability and affordability while maintaining extreme performance.

The co-founders’ thesis for Cambium was very simple, he says. “There hadn’t really been any novel polymer classes commercialized since the 1980s. They recognized this huge innovation gap in polymer chemistry and also that biology has the potential to create and access trillions of novel chemicals, that wouldn’t be possible otherwise, via its exquisite chemical synthesis capability. Thus, there are underserved opportunities — particularly in extreme performance applications in defense, aerospace, automotive and elsewhere — where biology might hold the key to creating these advanced materials.”

Gardner was also enthused by Cambium’s approach. “Because it was bio-enabled — that could mean bio or synthesis, it was open — they would use whatever methods and technologies were needed to get advanced materials to viable commercial products. It also included a blend of the things that interest me: aerospace, biotech, digital technologies, AI and machine learning [ML].” These all came together as Gardner joined Cambium to be its CIO and develop the company’s AI and ML capabilities in computational chemistry, predictive modeling and quantum and atomistic simulation for material design.

Once at Cambium, Gardner notes his close collaboration with the third key player in the company’s formation, Andy Guenthner. “He’s the scientific founder and worked for the Air Force Research Lab and the Navy, with 30 years of experience in polymer chemistry, polymer physics and material design for extreme performance,” he explains. “Cambium recruited Andy to breathe life into its technology. He was then able to partner with a chief scientific officer at the NAWCWD in China Lake, and together they went through a variety of candidates and discovered these novel classes of phthalonitriles [PN].” The result was Cambium’s first commercial product for composites (see “Cambium launches ApexShield 1000 …”).

“Since then,” says Gardner, “Andy and I have worked to expand the foundations of the AI and quantum chemistry simulation capabilities that he had started, and to build the general AI capabilities supporting Cambium’s overall operations.”

PN and CMC

Gardner notes that PN formulations were developed decades ago by the U.S. Navy. “They just didn’t get developed to the point of commercial utility.” PN resins have been in development by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) since the 1980s but sat in a chronic underinvestment gap without the funding required to scale up from lab-scale monomer to manufacturable, qualifiable and cost-effective products. Although early PN formulations used the OSHA-regulated carcinogen methylenedianiline (MDA) as a curing agent, later systems moved away in favor of alternative aromatic diamines. The main issue was processability.

Cambium’s opportunity came when defense funding priorities shifted. U.S. hypersonics spending had lapsed after the X-51 program wound down around 2013. But urgency returned after Russia’s 2018 unveiling of hypersonic weapons and China’s 2021 hypersonic glide vehicle test. These applications require lightweight, high-temperature materials like ceramic matrix composite (CMC) for structures and thermal protective shielding/thermal protection systems (TPS).

Cambium worked with NAWCWD to develop a combination of bio-based core molecules as precursors and fused those with phthalonitrile (PN) chemistry to create a novel polymer that was easier to manufacture into composites for high-temp applications.

“Andy and NAWCWD discovered a combination of bio-based core molecules as precursors, and fused them with PN chemistry,” says Gardner. “The result was a novel, high-performance thermoset polymer that could withstand temperatures above 400°C but were processable, with the right viscosity to be manufactured at near RT. They had great potential for composite TPS and possibly structures as well.”

With further development, this became ApexShield 1000, he explains, which can operate at extreme temperatures and also be heat treated to form carbon fiber-reinforced carbon (C/C) with a roughly 70% reduction in process time (see “High-temp resin eliminates hypersonic composite part bottlenecks” ). Such carbide CMC are increasingly sought after for high performance at temperatures above 1600°C, but have traditionally been very expensive and required months to manufacture. Unlike metals and ceramics that weaken when heated, C/C gets stronger as temperature increases up to ~2200°C, allowing it to withstand intense aerodynamic stresses.

Cambium has developed ApexShield resin systems to enable faster production of ablative carbon/carbon (C/C) composites for applications like rocket motor nozzles, hypersonic leading edges and re-entry nose tips.

C/C composites also function well as high-temperature ablatives. Unlike polymeric ablators (such as carbon fiber-reinforced phenolic), which rely heavily on the resin’s decomposition into gas, C/C composites rely primarily on thermochemical ablation, sublimation and radiative cooling. They undergo a controlled degradation to absorb, block and dissipate extreme thermal energy for applications like spacecraft atmospheric re-entry nose tips, hypersonic leading edges, TPS and rocket motor nozzles.

Cambium has also released ApexShield 3000, a PN coating engineered for metallic and composite substrates operating at extreme temperatures, such as in hypersonic flight. It enables electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency (RF) shielding for electronics and commercial programs requiring wavelength-tunable performance.

“That first molecule that Cambium developed is not a structural composite material,” says Gardner, “but it serves a valuable role in TPS because it’s easier to manufacture and able to achieve the target performance of ablatives and C/C. That’s really key because it gives the U.S. a path for a resilient supply chain and rapid production [see “U.S. Navy contract to advance Cambium C/C composites for hypersonics”]. Part production drops from 6-9 months down to 1 month. That was one of Cambium’s first novel products, but there are plenty of others now, either released or in the pipeline for commercialization.”

Use of AI and Schrödinger tools, inverse design

This issue of tackling processability and scalability while maintaining or tailoring performance is complexity. “It’s figuring out how to meet all those factors at the same time,” notes Gardner. “You solve one and you break another, but there are typically 10 factors, not two. If you iterate through that process sequentially and serially, in the traditional way, it takes years and you can’t possibly test all the things you want to. That’s where AI, ML and simulation come in. Cambium can now screen millions, if not billions, of molecules.”

Cambium’s fusion AI architecture enables scalable, continuous training on any type of data (chemical, physical, biological) and is being advanced to enable both forward (molecule to property) and inverse design (desired property to output candidate molecules and formulations).

“We’ve also been developing inverse design, where you specify the properties you want and with the help of AI and simulation you get a set of perhaps 20 molecules that would likely have those properties. It’s the Holy Grail for this type of molecular design,” he continues. “We have an AI model, a type of transformer neural network, that is getting close to being able to do that.”

As explained in a CW article with Schrödinger (New York, N.Y., U.S.), inverse design/development is a key part of the materials informatics (MI) paradigm shift, where ML and AI are used to dramatically reduce the time required to develop new materials and optimize how they are processed (see “Schrödinger advances MI for faster development of next-gen composites”): “But it goes even further, not only accelerating the forward direction of innovation — realizing properties for suggested candidate materials — but also enabling inverse development, where novel materials are suggested based on input of desired properties.”

Cambium uses a variety of in-house and commercial products for its computational capabilities, including Schrödinger tools for atomistic simulation, such as this 33,000-atom simulated DGEBA-propylene diamine network at 98% cure.

Cambium uses Schrödinger’s tools for atomistic simulation and quantum simulation, says Gardner, “but we’re agnostic with our computational capability, the same as we are about the source of our molecules. We’ll take whatever works.” He explains that quantum simulation is typically looking at one molecule, the arrangement and energy states of its electrons and how these influence molecular properties.

“The atomistic tool is used in simulating formulations at the scale of maybe 500 molecules — equivalent to roughly 20,000 or 30,000 atoms, depending on the molecule,” he continues. “You can then simulate what happens physically, and from that calculate properties. For example, we can screen and identify processability properties like fluid flow, ease of handling and tackiness while maintaining strength and toughness at high temperature.”

“But there are certain things that simulation cannot predict yet because there’s not sufficient experimental data or physics modeling capability. For example, a fast quantum simulation takes 12 hours for one molecule, which means analyzing a million molecules just isn’t possible. That’s where ML and AI come in. Instead of literally using physics to predict how things are going to work, we use AI to produce a statistical approximation. It’s the same as using ChatGPT or Claude. Those AI models don’t literally have cognition; they have a statistical approximation of the world’s knowledge and use that to predict the most likely response. Cambium is using AI to do the same thing. We collapse all of the physics into a statistical prediction of how a material is going to behave to complete in seconds what it would take 12, 24 or 72 hours on a typical atomistic simulation. You don’t necessarily know why that molecule gives you the desired outcome, or you may only partially understand it, but that doesn’t necessarily matter if you can get an accurate prediction nonetheless.”

Cambium’s screening of >860 candidates for PN resins showed that the commonly perceived trade-off between ease of processing (low viscosity) and thermal performance (char yield) has many exceptions.

Everything in science is an approximation, notes Gardner. “It’s just a question of how perfect an approximation. The neural networks we use can map between molecules and properties in both directions. We do a really good job from molecule and mixture formulation to property. Actually, most of the AI technologies to date have only worked on predicting what a molecule does. We can predict what a formulation does, and that’s a key advance. Going from property to molecule, we’re using this multimodal architecture of property and molecule fused together, and we’ve succeeded in beating property prediction benchmarks. We’re getting closer and closer.”

Target markets, moving beyond aero and defense

These accelerated development capabilities are first being applied to resin development in composites, says Gardner, but he adds the most exciting thing for Cambium these days is the acquisition of SHD Composites due to the path it provides toward wider application of the materials being developed.

“Lightweight materials for automotive body panels, for example, must compete with steel’s fast stamping of parts, fatigue resistance and all these additional properties that enable safety performance. That’s pretty hard to achieve all together, so we still have a way to go before we can replace automotive steel at scale. But a lot of the technologies we’ve developed to push toughness at extreme temperatures are finding immediate application, such as for thermal insulation—foams that are fire resistant—or side impact panels that can withstand thousands of pounds of intrusion force yet are lightweight. We’re increasingly turning our AI technologies towards those types of goals.”

Cambium’s acquisition of SHD Composites opens new markets and growth opportunities.

He notes SHD Composites has been serving those types of needs across a range of markets, including aircraft interiors, marine, motorsport and drones, as well as tooling for composites production. “SHD serves myriad carbon fiber and glass fiber composite applications and brings exposure for our AI and computational capabilities in these more conventional performance problems and their manufacturability needs.”

He cites Tesla’s July 2026 announcement about polymer body panels for its Cybercab vehicles as an example. The company will use a reaction injection molding (RIM) process that integrates color pigment into the polyurethane (PU) polymer mix injected into the mold, eliminating paint and speeding up subsequent clearcoating to shrink Cybercab paint cycles from hours to minutes. “This is something we had already envisioned as part of a future casting exercise, but we also see the industry’s interest to embed sensors and other multifunctionality. I see tremendous opportunity for Cambium and SHD Composites to create these new technologies for the consumer, where the limitation is often manufacturing more than performance. We’re not trying to replace auto body panels tomorrow, but we still see a wide range of opportunities for growth.”

But what about defense? “We began by seeking niche markets where high-performance materials are critical, but we are absolutely seeking the broadest set of markets, verticals and types of buyers,” says Gardner, “because we’re an advanced materials company, not a defense company.”

In July 2026, Cambium launched SentinelOps, a tunable solution for laser and directed energy protection that maintains high-fidelity vision needed by commercial and military pilots, firefighters and others. In September, it launched ApexFrame 5000, a PN-based laminating film adhesive for non-structural bonding of polymer films and metallic foils for sustained service up to 315°C and excursions to 427°C.

“Defense is a necessity, but it’s also a market that can tolerate costly materials initially and be the first buyer, then help advance R&D, bringing the cost curve down where you can access commercial markets. We have embraced defense for the purpose of filling the gap in advanced material development but we’d love our commercial markets to be 100 times bigger than our defense markets. The economic reality is that defense is actually a small market in terms of volume, and not something that would support all of our long-term ambitions.”

Cambium helped USCRPL’s Daybreak rocket reach space, using its ApexShield 1000 material to build the “boattail,” an aerodynamic shroud for the rocket nozzle.

What about more products for CMC? “The demand for high-temperature materials is being driven by rocket motors, TPS for space vehicles and satellites certainly,” says Gardner. “There are growing opportunities there, and we will continue to pursue those markets through new resins and new processing methods, including with different fibers. We also do a lot of prototyping of parts to help our customers understand the potential of such developments. For example, we helped with the University of Southern California Rocket Propulsion Laboratory’s [USCRPL] Daybreak rocket mission to teach them how to build these parts.”

“We will keep pursuing those opportunities, but we’re looking at other markets as well, which could include automotive,” adds Gardner, “but adhesives and coatings also offer a large area of opportunity, and there are other areas where we are already working.”

Reimagining the future of composites

What will Cambium look like in 5 years? “We want to be the world’s premier and largest supplier of prepregs, composites and advanced materials,” says Gardner. When asked if that means current industry leaders will have to take a back seat, he explains, “The advances we’re making have to happen. Achieving affordability and manufacturability has been a real obstacle for composites, and it’s not just defense markets and commercial consumers that need these solutions, but also the parts manufacturers and supply chains.” 

He explains how the acquisition of SHD Composites is part of this vision. “They have been so customer focused and agile, which is why they’ve been so successful. Building on our shared passion for innovation, we’re learning from their core culture and experience to shape Cambium’s global culture toward maximum customer responsiveness, agility, speed and delivery on customer needs from material design all the way through part prototyping. We’re reimagining the future and already changing what’s possible.”

Read More

Source | Getty Images (top) and Yannick Willemin (bottom)

Cambium’s $100 Million Play: Fundraising Engineering Meets Composites Scale

Cambium's $100 million raise, acquisition of SHD Composites signal a bold strategy blending AI-driven materials innovation with proven composites production expertise.

Source | Cellsius, Airframer

Cellsius (Zurich, Switzerland), a non-profit association of ETH Zurich students, is preparing its H2-Sling aircraft for a first test flight, pending clearance from Switzerland’s Federal Office of Civil Aviation. In Airframer, the H2-Sling is described as a hydrogen-powered aircraft built with carbon fiber pressure tanks and a composite cowling. Longer term, the team hopes to use it to cross the Alps. 

The aircraft draws power from a hydrogen fuel cell system, in which hydrogen and oxygen react across a membrane to generate electricity and heat, leaving water as the only byproduct. Two pressure tanks mounted beneath the wings hold the gaseous hydrogen; Cellsius, on its project page, identifies these as cylindrical Type 4 tanks, each capable of storing hydrogen at 700 bar. Airframer puts the capacity at 2.6 kilograms per tank, giving the aircraft a range of around 200 kilometers.

The tanks are covered by an aerodynamic cowling that Cellsius says is about 2 meters long and made from a composite material, adding only a few kilograms to the aircraft despite its size. The powertrain is integrated into a modified Sling High Wing kit airframe supplied by Sling Aircraft (Eikenhof, South Africa), work Cellsius describes as an extension of its earlier e-Sling battery-electric demonstrator.

To keep the fuel cell’s reaction stable, the system supplies more hydrogen than it consumes; the surplus is recirculated from the anode outlet back to the inlet by a MINK MH blower donated to ETH Zurich by Busch Vacuum Solutions (Maulburg, Germany). 

Read more about hydrogen fuel cell technology on CW.

Source | Cevotec

Cevotec (Unterhaching, Germany) and KCompositeLab (KCLab, Seoul, South Korea) have entered a commercial partnership to bring robotic lamination to composites manufacturers in South Korea. KCLab acts as Cevotec’s sales partner in the Korean market and supports customers technically — from the first feasibility assessment through process development to production ramp-up — leveraging its own composite engineering capabilities.

The partnership primarily targets two industries: manufacturers of aerospace and defense structures, and producers of composite pressure vessels for hydrogen storage. Sovereign aerospace programs, a rapidly expanding defense export industry and government-backed localization initiatives create sustained demand, while hydrogen mobility drives volume in composite tank production. The type of process automation demand from these industries match Cevotec’s equipment portfolio well.

Cevotec’s robotic lamination technology is based on the fiber patch placement (FPP) process, which has been developed in the aerospace industry for close to 20 years. Cevotec has been industrializing the technology during the past 10 years for series production. Robotic lamination equipment automates composite layup on complex 3D geometries. Robots place individual plies or patches of carbon fiber, glass fiber, prepreg or adhesive film onto complex-shaped molds; each patch can be individually oriented. This enables process automation for mid-sized, complex aircraft parts that typically fall outside the process window of established technologies that, for example, build aircraft wings and fuselages. As robotic lamination is not used in South Korea so far, it represents an opportunity for the industry to extent the automation envelope for high-quality, high-rate composites manufacturing.

For composite pressure vessels, the technology enables industrial production of dome reinforcements. These local reinforcements enable additional storage volume by reducing overall weight and material needed. According to Cevotec, this combination of cost and performance benefits is an attractive lever for Korean companies manufacturing Type 4 hydrogen tanks, which continue to serve a continuously growing hydrogen market in the region.

Cevotec, as technology and automation solution provider, is delivering Samba robotic lamination equipment, configured according to application requirements, programmed via digital twin in the Artist Studio CAD-CAM software. KCLab provides its own laboratory, material expertise and a network across the Korean composites industry. Korean manufacturers can therefore evaluate parts locally: feasibility checks, ROI calculations, design studies and process trials, facilitated through KCLab, in collaboration with Cevotec’s engineering team in Munich.

Beyond direct sales, both partners plan joint pilot and demonstration projects with Korean manufacturers and research institutes, technical workshops and a joint presence at Carbon Korea 2026 in Seoul from Nov. 4-6, 2026.

The redesigned heat dissipation device combines carbon fiber prepreg with layers of graphite. Source (All Images) | Mitsubishi 

Non-terrestrial network (NTN) antennas connect smart devices or drones to satellites, and can be placed in fixed locations like rooftops or, increasingly, mobile ones such as vehicles, marine vessels or aircraft. The high-power electronics required to operate the system necessitate high levels of heat dissipation performance to protect the overall antenna, conventionally achieved with an aluminum heat dissipation device that conducts heat safely away from the structure. However, the desire for increasingly mobile and movable antennas creates a need for the overall structure to be as lightweight as possible, including the heat dissipation device.

In July 2025, four Tokyo, Japan-based companies started a collaboration to target this challenge: Mitsubishi Chemical Corp., the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), electronics company Sharp Corp. and engineering and manufacturing company Techlab Co. Ltd.

The goal was “to jointly develop ultra-compact, lightweight satellite communication terminals for mobility applications, and address the excessive weight and thermal management limitations of the conventional aluminum design,” explains Mitsubishi Chemical. The new structure also needs to maintain the antenna’s required electrical and heat dissipation performance.

First, the partners defined the thermal and weight requirements of the device to determine the optimal materials, then designed the structure. For lightweighting, the partners naturally turned to carbon fiber composites; for the thermal conductivity requirements, they settled upon graphite, commonly used for in-plane thermal conductivity in electronics but too brittle to be used on its own in a structural part.

Mitsubishi Chemical developed and supplied carbon fiber prepreg (resin for this specific demonstrator application is undisclosed, but would commonly be an epoxy) and graphite sheet materials that would be layered together, while Techlab developed the mold and process technology for forming the final part.

The heat dissipation device, also called a thermal management device, sits between the antenna and modem.

As of June 2026, the new heat dissipation device has been completed and tested, integrated into the planar antenna, and the electrical performance of the antenna has been verified and its overall operation demonstrated. After manufacturing by Techlab, Sharp integrated the completed device into the NTN planar antenna and validated the electrical and terminal-level performance.

The results? The device, which on its own weights less than 1 kilogram, is reported to reduce overall antenna weight by 47%, from 5.5 to 2.9 kilograms. This supports “the broader aim of making satellite communication terminals practical for installation on drones, vehicles and other mobility platforms,” Mitsubishi Chemical says.

Regarding its thermal conductivity performance, the company adds, that testing showed no meaningful degradation in antenna performance compared to the conventional aluminum design. Radiation pattern differences remained within measurement error, and receive-gain characteristics were unchanged. The team also confirmed operation of the antenna with a model as a complete satellite communication terminal, demonstrating that the lighter system can fit within the payload capacity limits of commonly used industrial drones and can be mounted on vehicles and other mobility platforms.

The project is now moving forward into further evaluation of thermal performance and mountability, along with continued prototyping and demonstrators toward practical deployment on drones, vehicles and other mobility platforms.

Clean Aviation’s new projects move technologies developed in previous research toward ground and flight testing. From top right, clockwise: PHARES, part of the Ultra-Efficient Regional Aircraft (UERA) initiative, infused wingbox at Mtorres in IIAMS project and Advanced Rear End (ARE) demonstrator at Aernnova Composites. Sources | Clean Aviation, Airbus Defence and Space, MTorres and Aernnova Composites.

The governing board of the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking (Brussels, Belgium) has approved €290 million in EU funding for 19 new projects, mobilizing €664 million in total research effort. The awards mark Clean Aviation’s move into the demonstration phase, carrying technologies developed under earlier research programs out of the lab and into full-scale ground test facilities, with the most mature candidates advancing to flight demonstration.

The projects span hybrid-electric and hydrogen propulsion architectures and systems, airframe optimization, noise reduction and anti-icing technologies — including two composites-focused efforts, ARELIS and ATHENA, aimed at advancing composite rear-fuselage/empennage and full airframe structures and a third project on lightweight liquid hydrogen storage.

List of projects in Call 4. Source | Clean Aviation

Eight projects funded under Clean Aviation’s Fast Track Areas will begin at the end of 2026, with the remaining 11 following in early 2027. Full-scale ground demonstrations and flight tests are planned for 2029-2030. Clean Aviation states the projects are intended to contribute to a reduction of net greenhouse gas emissions from short-medium range (SMR) and regional aircraft of at least 30% compared with 2020 state-of-the-art technology, laying groundwork toward decarbonized aircraft targeted for entry into service by 2035.

The awards follow Clean Aviation’s fourth call for proposals, in which participation by small- and medium-sized enterprises, research and technology organizations and universities nearly doubled compared with prior calls, accounting for 42% of the funding allocated. Of 185 total participating entities, 74 — nearly 40% — are new to the program, a trend Clean Aviation attributes largely to increased interest in the Fast Track Areas and new eligibility conditions for certain proposals. The expanded participant base broadens the program’s geographic and organizational reach, which supports Europe’s future aviation supply chain capacity.

Composites in the Call 4 lineup

Ultra-Efficient Rear Fuselage and Empennage

Of the 19 projects, two directly rely on composites. ARELIS, led by Airbus Operations SL (Getafe, Spain), will demonstrate an “Ultra-Efficient Rear Fuselage and Empennage and Its Integrated Industrial System” for SMR aircraft, part of a category that received €106 million in total EU funding across four projects. ARELIS succeeds the Clean Sky 2 Advanced Rear End (ARE) demonstrator, which achieved a 13% weight reduction through lightweight composite structures and a 20% recurring cost reduction at the component level using low-cost composite manufacturing methods.

CW covered the composite frame, stringer and skin work behind that predecessor project in 2021 (see “Clean Sky 2 releases project results”). ARELIS is tasked with carrying that work to a full-component assembly and industrial system capable of high-rate production ahead of the 2035 EIS target.

Ultra-Efficient Regional Aircraft (UERA)

ATHENA, led by Leonardo (Rome, Italy), will demonstrate an advanced airframe for Clean Aviation’s “Ultra-Efficient Regional Aircraft (UERA)” concept (also developed in the PHARES and HERACLES projects), part of a €40 million funding category. Clean Aviation’s topic description for the project calls for an advanced airframe — wing, fuselage, empennage and key enabling systems — for the hybrid-electric UERA concept, building on composite fuselage and outer wingbox demonstrator work that CW also reported on (see “Clean Aviation’s regional aircraft technology testbed #2 demonstrates advances with composites”).

Innovative lightweight and reliable liquid hydrogen tank

Another Call 4 project, ATLAS (Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Caserta, Italy), is developing an “innovative lightweight and reliable” liquid hydrogen tank. Composite architectures dominate parallel Clean Aviation liquid hydrogen storage work, but neither project’s published title nor materials confirm a composite construction.

This SpacePrinter was developed in partnership with the Institute of Polymer and Composites (IFPT) at Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH). Source | IFPT, CompriseTec GmbH

The Industrialized Additive Manufacturing Hub Hamburg (IAMHH e.V., Hamburg, Germany), an organization that connects industry, research, academia and policymakers to establish additive manufacturing (AM) as a key industrial technology, has added CompriseTec GmbH (Hamburg) as a member of its network. CompriseTec brings expertise in thermoplastics, thermosets, fiber-reinforced composites (FRP), rubber and hybrid materials, spanning material structures and properties as well as processing, process engineering and economic considerations.

CompriseTec is currently engaged in a range of R&D projects, including materials and processes for polymer 3D printing and glass- and carbon-fiber-reinforced components for the aerospace and automotive industries. Its work also extends to bio-based thermoplastics, lightweight components, microstructured surfaces and manufacturing technologies for FRP parts.

In a LinkedIn post on the subject, IAMHH e.V. says it looks forward to connecting CompriseTec’s expertise in materials, processes and AM with the broader network.

Hamburg-based IAMHH serves as a regional hub for AM in Northern Germany, providing a point of contact for companies and organizations looking to engage with the region’s AM ecosystem. Its activities include knowledge exchange, industry events, webinars and collaborative projects that support the development and industrial application of this manufacturing process.

Source | Continuous Composites video

Continuous Composites (CCI, Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, U.S.) has been awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract with the U.S. Navy to further develop its Continuous Fiber 3D Printing (CF3D) technology for multifunctinal unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) structures. 

The program focuses on embedding electrical conductors directly within composite structures, enabling load-bearing components that also serve as integrated power distribution systems. This approach eliminates the need for traditional wire harnesses and simplifies system architecture in UAV platforms.

During Phase I, CCI demonstrated the ability to co-print conductive elements within fiberglass-reinforced composite panels, including copper wiring and fiber optics, and evaluated their impact on structural performance through mechanical and electrical testing. Results showed minimal impact on mechanical integrity, validating the feasibility of integrating functional materials within composite laminates.

Building on these findings, Phase II will advance the structural integration of embedded conductors within composite architectures. The effort will focus on incorporating higher-capacity conductive pathways into load-bearing components while maintaining mechanical performance and electrical isolation through controlled material placement. Emphasis will be placed on ensuring that structural integrity is preserved as functionality is introduced to enable composite components that carry both load and power without compromising performance.

The result is a structurally integrated power system for more modular UAV architectures. In field operations, damaged components can be rapidly replaced while reducing the risk of damaging wires and connectors. This decreases repair complexity, minimizes downtime and improves overall system reliability.

“This program represents a shift from printing structure alone to printing functionality directly into the structure,” says Steve Starner, CEO of Continuous Composites.

The Phase II program includes a 30-month R&D period focused on materials, process validation and embedded conductor integration at the coupon and sub-scale structure level. This effort is followed by a 1-year option period to deliver a functional, system-level demonstration, advancing the technology toward deployment in operational UAV platforms.

This work supports broader Department of Defense initiatives to reduce system complexity, improve maintainability and accelerate the deployment of advanced composite-enabled platforms.

Omnidea overtaping in robot cell. Source | DLR

The DLR Institute of Structures and Design (Stuttgart and Augsburg, Germany) and Omnidea-RTG GmbH (Stuhr, Germany) have developed a Type 5 liquified natural gas (LNG) tank demonstrator made from carbon fiber-reinforced low-melt PAEK (Victrex, LMPAEK) and manufactured using an in situ automated fiber placement (AFP) process. The 1-meter-diameter tank was built as part of a research project funded by the European Space Agency (ESA, Paris, France) at DLR’s Center for Lightweight Production Technology (ZLP) site in Augsburg, and was developed to advance lightweight, high-strength storage systems for cryogenic fuels such as hydrogen and methane.

DLR reports that both tank halves and their joining were manufactured using the same thermoplastic in situ AFP technology, allowing the complete tank structure to be produced in a single, continuous process chain without separate joining operations or specialized molds. The development chain covered structural design of the tank system, material selection, permeability analyses to confirm leak-tightness under cryogenic conditions and mechanical characterization of the joints.

This integrated manufacturing approach can help reduce production costs and manufacturing complexity by eliminating separate joining processes and dedicated tooling, while making more efficient use of existing manufacturing infrastructure.

DLR and Omnidea-RTG present the demonstrator as evidence of the technological maturity and industrial feasibility of thermoplastic AFP for cryogenic storage systems, pointing to potential applications in future space missions and terrestrial uses.

More information on the project is available on DLR’s project page and LinkedIn.

Major international carriers such as Air France-KLM are currently employing drones, such as the Iris CMX shown here, for regular exterior surface coating maintenance scanning. Source | AkzoNobel

The visual inspection of an aircraft’s exterior, including the fuselage, wings, engines, landing gear and control surfaces such as ailerons, rudders and elevators, is part of any air carrier’s regular maintenance protocol. And while you might not think it, it is also one of the most arduously time-consuming procedures and open to potential error.

For the most part, exterior visual inspections are done by a human worker armed often with little more than a flashlight or handheld gauge. Cracks, corrosion and deformations are usually not difficult to spy; however, when it comes to assessing dry film thickness, color or gloss measurements, the margin of error is wider. Moreover, the physical limitations of human inspection present significant positioning accuracy and line-of-sight challenges. Human inspectors struggle to accurately gauge areas such as the inside of wheel wells, darker, more confined spaces like engine cowlings and pylons, and the upper fuselage and wing tips, where micro-cracking and corrosion may go unchecked.

Recently, however, drones and robots are coming to the forefront of nondestructive testing capabilities, and AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings (Waukegan, Illinois) has aimed to lead the way.

Leveraging data

In 2023, AkzoNobel introduced its Aerofleet Coatings Management service (ACMS), a data-driven coatings optimization platform developed in partnership with drone manufacturer Donecle (Toulouse, France). The ACMS combines flight and environmental data, such as UV exposure, humidity and route profiles, with visual- and contact-based measurement data. It was devised to empower airlines’ maintenance and repainting protocols, offering them full-service visual analysis via a wide range of high-resolution imaging married to a digital management system that analyzes that imagery to identify any issues or wear in an aircraft’s surface coating.

In 2023, AkzoNobel launched its Aerofleet Coatings Management system with the Iris GVI inspection drone, developed in partnership with Donecle.
Source | AkzoNobel

At launch, the ACMS employed a drone — the Iris GVI — to capture and relay the imagery to the analyzer. More recently, AkzoNobel has expanded its drone-based capability with the Iris CMX, which brings a third component to the ACMS system: targeted, high-precision measurement. Taken altogether, combined data input provides a complete picture of an aircraft’s current coating condition, while also forecasting future maintenance requirements.

“Localized degradation is identified through the visual- and contact-based measurement data,” AkzoNobel global aerospace commercial director Ted Rhee tells PF. “This can enable potential issues to be identified earlier, when more targeted touch-up coating repairs may still be sufficient. The flight and environmental data help establish whether the coating is aging as expected and identifies outliers within the fleet that may require additional attention. It also helps forecast how coating conditions are likely to evolve over time, supporting airlines in predicting more accurate repainting timelines.”

Greater contact and control

The contact-based Iris CMX sensor drone is a forward-mounted arm embedded with three contact-based sensors. Because the arm is rotatable, the sensors are able to make contact with the surface at all angles — whether it is a vertical or horizontal surface, whether from above or below.

“The drone is over-actuated, meaning it has extra propellers that can provide thrust in all directions,” Rhee explains. “Combined with the rotating arm, the drone can push and maintain the payload of the sensors against the painted surface. It uses laser navigation and a pre-defined program for each aircraft’s livery, indicating where and how to measure. All measurements are done simultaneously.”

The Iris CMX drone provides a full-surface contact measurement of an aircraft’s exterior coating.
Source | AkzoNobel

The two-drone system — Iris GVI and CMX — can complete a narrowbody aircraft inspection (e.g., Airbus A319/A320 family aircraft, or the Boeing 737) in about 30 minutes, a significant time savings from the five to eight hours a typical visual inspection requires.

“Of course, the biggest savings will come from extending the interval between full repaints,” Rhee says. “The inspection process can help identify minor coating issues at an earlier stage, allowing targeted repairs to be carried out before they develop into more significant areas of degradation. These repairs can maintain coating condition and extend the time between full repaints. In the longer term, we estimate that airlines could save between 10% and 20% on annual repainting and aircraft out-of-service costs.”

AkzoNobel teams with TAP Air Portugal for basecoat trial

 

Source | AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings/TAP Air Portugal

TAP Air Portugal, the largest commercial carrier in South America with a fleet of around 106 aircraft, partnered with AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings to successfully trial a lighter basecoat technology on one of TAP’s Airbus A320s.

Using AkzoNobel’s Aerobase UPD formulation in a single coat, the trial showed a 36% basecoat film thickness reduction over a traditional two-coat process, which translates to an overall weight savings of 53 pounds. A cross-coat application technique enables the required hiding power and finish quality to be achieved via a single basecoat application cycle, eliminating the need for a second full basecoat layer and associated flash-off stages.

The company projects that if this lighter coating were applied to TAP’s entire fleet, the cumulative fuel savings resulting from a drop in weight per aircraft would be approximately 428.5 tonnes, equivalent to €500,000 in fuel cost and 1,353 tonnes of CO₂ emissions.

Of the test trail, AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings segment manager for OEM, MRO and airlines Aurore Bournazel says, “This program demonstrates how incremental innovations in coatings technology can deliver measurable operational benefits and emissions savings for airlines. By reducing total film build and simplifying the application process, Aerobase UPD helps operators lower aircraft weight, improve paint shop productivity and maintain the high-quality finish standards required across commercial aviation fleets. The aviation industry is focused on identifying practical opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce emissions, and coatings technology can play an important role in supporting those wider sustainability ambitions.”

Sustainability and CO₂ emission reduction are two of the global air transportation industry’s key markers as it moves toward its 2050 goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions. The UPD formulation is now being applied and trialed on a second TAP A320, and a fleet-wide rollout is currently in the planning stages.

The shop impact

AkzoNobel has positioned Aerofleet as “ideally suited for fleets of 100 aircraft or more,” which suggests a barrier to entry for smaller carriers or independent maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) providers.

“There is both a cost and data element here,” Rhee admits, but he sees both barriers as relatively short term. “The larger the fleet, the faster the return on investment with little or no need to change the repainting procurement. Indeed, with high throughput, it is easier to first optimize the order in which aircraft are painted and then reduce the number of full repaints. On the data side, the ACMS AI models are still being fine-tuned. Larger fleets simply enable faster convergence. As the models and the industry gain experience, these barriers to entry will decline.”

Regardless of air carrier or coatings shop size, however, the addition of the Iris CMX to the ACMS platform does offer additional benefits, including fleshed-out work orders and spec sheets that are generated automatically and shared with the airline customer, who can then present them to their coating shop partner, eliminating guesswork associated with the job spec. The fleet data generated by the ACMS is also informing necessary or recommended reformulation of coatings themselves.

“The potential for ACMS in this area comes from the digitization of inspection data that our customers will have,” Rhee says. “As these datasets grow, they [will] reveal meaningful performance patterns across different operating conditions. Our most recent reformulation work has focused on balancing performance, process control and weight to support customers’ operational sustainability goals. An update to our Aerobase basecoat is one example where formulation and application improvements have improved film-build control and repeatability, helping achieve the required finish with lower coating weight.”

The Iris CMX drone can access areas of an aircraft difficult for a handheld gauge, such as the contours of parts that move freely, such as ailerons, rudders and elevators. Source | AkzoNobel

Further developments

AkzoNobel and partner Donecle are continuing their ongoing collaborative efforts toward further expanding the ACMS and its capabilities. “We’re collaborating on the development of predictive AI models,” Rhee says. “And importantly, this technology is not limited to aircraft using AkzoNobel coatings. It can also be made available to airlines and third-party MRO providers operating aircraft that use other coating systems, or a combination of AkzoNobel and other coatings.”

Looking beyond commercial aviation, Rhee also sees a drone-based, quantitative inspection approach migrating to other coated-metal and coated-plastic sectors where large painted surfaces are similarly hard to inspect manually and repainting decisions are costly: “While the current focus is on aerospace, the drones and technology could migrate to other sectors including marine and wind power assets.”

For the time being, with air carriers such as Air France-KLM, Avianca and LATAM Airlines Group already employing drone technology in their surface inspection protocols — and U.S. majors such as Delta Air Lines poised to begin — the sky is really no limit at all.

Electroless nickel’s (EN) combination of corrosion resistance, wear performance, conductivity, uniform deposition and substrate versatility positions it as an enabling surface technology for next-generation aerospace systems. Source | Adobe Stock

Design in aerospace has always required a balance between weight, performance, reliability and cost. Today, that balance is becoming increasingly complex as aircraft developers pursue higher levels of electrification, expand the use of advanced composites and engineered polymer materials — which in turn is leading to new manufacturing method exploration — and integrate sophisticated electronic systems.¹ It is this shift in priority toward lightweight, efficient components that do more, but still perform reliably in highly demanding environments, that is creating new challenges for aerospace engineers.

This shift inherently reshapes expectations for surface finishing. A coating may be required to protect against corrosion while simultaneously providing wear resistance, electrical conductivity, electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding or dimensional consistency. But as substrates and component geometries become more complex, the coating system must also be compatible with materials and designs that did not traditionally require the use of surface finishing technologies.

Electroless nickel (EN) offers a solution to these challenges, as its properties address a range of engineering demands. Beyond functioning as a corrosion-resistant finish, EN can also serve as an engineered functional layer that contributes to overall component performance. Its combination of uniform deposition, corrosion resistance, hardness, conductivity and substrate versatility makes it particularly relevant as aerospace designs continue to evolve.

Shifting aerospace design priorities

Aircraft electrification is one example of how aerospace design priorities are changing. NASA is one of many organizations actively researching electrified aircraft propulsion technologies intended to make commercial aviation more efficient, including all-electric, hybrid-electric and turbo-electric configurations. In July 2026, it reported that a megawatt-class hybrid-electric engine developed with GE Aerospace had flown on a modified Saab 340B, including test flights above 30,000 feet.² 

As aircraft become more electrified, new demands typically turn first to basic architecture, since motors, generators, power electronics and other electrical components take on a greater role within increasingly integrated systems. In hybrid-electric propulsion systems, for example, electrical machines can supply additional thrust or extract power from turbine engines, but considerations such as conductivity, shielding, corrosion protection, and thermal and environmental durability become increasingly important.

Lightweighting is another ongoing design priority. Advanced composite materials enable aerospace engineers to combine low weight with high strength and other tailored properties. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) notes that composites are used in critical aviation applications and can provide lighter weight, along with strength, corrosion resistance and heat resistance, compared with traditional materials. The agency also identifies potential maintenance benefits associated with advanced composites, including longer service intervals in appropriate applications.³

This transition does not mean metals are disappearing. Instead, aerospace manufacturers are increasingly working with a combination of aluminum, steels, composites, engineered thermoplastics and other advanced materials. The result is a more complicated surface engineering environment in which the finish must be selected as part of the overall component system.

Functional coatings are becoming engineered performance systems

Historically, a finish might be discussed primarily in terms of a single characteristic, such as corrosion resistance. Today, however, the demands on aerospace components require a more complex and versatile range of performance qualities. A functional coating may need to protect the underlying substrate from corrosion, withstand abrasion, maintain electrical conductivity, contribute to EMI shielding and remain consistent across intricate geometries. It may also need to perform reliably through temperature changes and mechanical stresses encountered during service.

EN is particularly useful in this context because its properties extend beyond corrosion protection alone.

Unlike conventional electrolytic nickel plating, EN is an autocatalytic chemical deposition process. Its deposition mechanism does not depend on external electrical current distribution across the component, allowing the process to produce a comparatively uniform coating on complex geometries, including recesses, cavities and irregular surfaces.

That characteristic becomes increasingly valuable as component design becomes more sophisticated. When a coating is performing an engineering function, thickness distribution is not merely cosmetic. Variations in thickness can affect dimensions and ultimately component performance. Uniform deposition, therefore, gives designers another tool for applying a functional metallic surface to increasingly complicated components.

Why EN continues to matter

Not all EN deposits are created equal. The phosphorus content of the nickel-phosphorus alloy influences the properties of the resulting coating and allows the process to be tailored toward particular performance requirements.

High-phosphorus EN deposits, for example, are widely used where corrosion resistance is a primary consideration. As phosphorus content increases, the deposit develops a more amorphous structure with fewer grain boundaries that can provide pathways for corrosive attack.

Mid-phosphorus EN deposits provide a different balance of characteristics and are used extensively in aerospace applications where corrosion protection, hardness and electrical properties must be considered together.

Low-phosphorus EN deposits demonstrate the highest as-plated hardness which provides very robust wear resistance, especially under abrasive wear conditions, while maintaining good electrical conductivity.

EN is also useful for a variety of aerospace substrates. Steel and aluminum are established examples, while appropriate surface preparation makes it possible to metallize engineering plastics and composite materials as well.

This flexibility becomes increasingly relevant as aerospace moves toward mixed-material designs. The question is no longer, “What coating protects this metal?” It is increasingly, “What surface system delivers the required functionality on the substrate selected for this component?”

EN plays an important role in enabling plastic or composite aerospace connector assemblies to meet a range of requirements including lightning strike protection, electrical conductivity and shielding performance. Source | MacDermid Enthone Industrial Solutions

Advanced materials are changing the finishing process

The expansion of engineered polymers and composites creates opportunities for aerospace designers, but it also introduces new finishing challenges.

Materials such as polyetheretherketone (PEEK), polyetherimide (PEI) and polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) provide useful combinations of mechanical and thermal performance and support molding and additive manufacturing processes. However, achieving reliable adhesion of metallic coatings to these materials is often more challenging than with traditional substrates.

For nonconductive polymers, proper surface preparation and activation are essential to establishing a strong bond with subsequent metallic layers. The quality of this interface directly influences the durability and performance of the finished coating system.

The aerospace and surface finishing industries alike are also evaluating how these processes meet environmental and regulatory objectives. Traditional plastic pretreatment has included hexavalent chromium-based etching. Chrome-free alternatives are now available that can prepare both traditional and engineered plastics for subsequent metallization.

The key to finishing these new material developments goes beyond one chemistry in isolation, however. Instead, it is the emergence of complete surface engineering systems in which pretreatment, adhesion, metallization and final functional coatings are designed to work together.

Aerospace connectors point to a broader trend

Aerospace electrical connectors provide a useful example of this complete systems approach. MIL-DTL-38999 connectors are used in commercial and military aerospace applications where electrical continuity, environmental protection and EMI shielding are critical. On traditional aluminum connectors, EN serves as an intermediate or final finish that provides corrosion protection and preserves conductive performance.

The performance requirements for these components are demanding. MIL-DTL-38999 connector assemblies have stringent electrical continuity and contact resistance requirements for specified plated finishes. Meanwhile, connector systems designed for lightning strike environments must maintain structural integrity, electrical conductivity and shielding performance under severe transient electrical loads.

The move from aluminum to nonconductive engineered polymers demonstrates how the role of the coating system changes with the substrate. A plastic or composite connector does not inherently provide the electrical conductivity of an aluminum connector. Applying a copper metallization layer, however, will help establish this needed electrical conductivity. EN can then protect that copper layer from corrosion and preserve conductive continuity. In these instances, mid-phosphorus EN is commonly used for its higher nickel content, which provides slightly better conductive properties than its high-phosphorus counterpart.

Connectors, therefore, provide a useful model for what is happening more broadly in aerospace finishing. The substrate is changing, but performance requirements remain. The coating system becomes the bridge between a lightweight material choice and the electrical, environmental and mechanical properties required from the finished component.

Finishing as an enabling technology

Next-generation aerospace platforms will continue to place new demands on advanced materials (e.g., certification and structural performance, manufacturing technologies, bonded joints, maintenance procedures), lightweighting, electrification and other efficiencies. Research into electrified propulsion and autonomous systems illustrates the increasing complexity of future aircraft, with technologies spanning advanced power systems, AI, flight controls, collision avoidance, automated navigation and sensing technologies.⁴

For finishers, these developments create an important opportunity. New materials and manufacturing technologies do not eliminate the need for surface engineering. In many cases, they increase it and demand innovation. A lightweight polymer component may still need a conductive surface. An electronic housing may still require EMI shielding and corrosion protection. A complex component may require tightly controlled coating thickness. A wear surface must still survive repeated and prolonged mechanical contact. All of these requirements must be delivered reliably and repeatably within an aerospace manufacturing environment.

That is where EN’s future becomes particularly interesting. Its value increasingly lies in the ability to combine multiple functions within a carefully engineered coating system and to apply those functions across an expanding range of substrates and component designs. It is this well-established characteristic that will make it advantageous as the applications surrounding continue to evolve.

References

¹Federal Aviation Administration. (2026, April 9). “Technical discipline: Advance composite materials.” U.S. Department of Transportation. https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/step/disciplines/advanced_composite_materials

²Margetta, R. (2026, July 20). “NASA, GE Aerospace work enables hybrid-electric flight demonstration.” National Aeronautics and Space Administration. https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/rtmd/nasa-ge-hybrid-electric-flight/

³National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (n.d.). Electrified aircraft propulsion. https://www.nasa.gov/mission/eap/

⁴National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (2021, December 7). Autonomous systems. Armstrong Flight Research Center. https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/autonomous-systems/

About the Author

Ambrose Schaffer

aAmbrose Schaffer is the global product line manager, wear resistant coatings for North America, for MacDermid Enthone Industrial Solutions. Contact: macdermidenthone.com/

Source | Eptek

Eptek Tooling Materials (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. (Eptek), a Chinese manufacturer of tooling materials, has developed a precision‑cast polyurethane and epoxy tooling board technology that replaces traditional spliced board construction for large, complex molds and models.

Conventional tooling boards are supplied as standard rectangular slabs. For large parts or deep cavities, manufacturers must cut, glue, cure and finish multiple sections. This splicing creates bondlines that differ from the base material in hardness, thermal expansion and sanding behavior. Even after filling and painting, seams can reappear on high‑gloss or Class A surfaces, especially after temperature cycling. Glue joints also become potential leak paths in vacuum‑forming and composite layup tooling, and adhesive layers are weak points that can crack or delaminate under repeated loads. In addition, splicing requires multiple steps — cutting, gluing, clamping, curing and seam finishing — which add time and labor.

Eptek’s alternative uses a close‑contour casting process. Starting from the customer’s 3D data, the company designs a dedicated cavity and injects liquid polyurethane (PUcast) or epoxy (EPcast) resin to form a single, monolithic blank that closely follows the final part contour. Only minimal machining allowance is left, reducing roughing time — in some cases by more than 50%. For thick‑wall or high‑temperature applications, staged curing and post-curing are applied to minimize internal stress and stabilize dimensions.

The cast blanks eliminate bondlines entirely, offering continuous surfaces, better vacuum integrity and longer service life compared with spliced boards. While standard board stock remains economical for small, simple parts, the casting approach becomes more efficient for large, curved or vacuum‑sealed workpieces.

In automotive model‑making, which accounts for about half of Eptek’s projects, the cast tooling boards are used for full‑vehicle styling models, data control models, interior/exterior trim tooling and check fixtures. The seamless blanks allow Class A surface evaluation without seam telegraphing.

In aerospace applications — also about 50% of the portfolio — the material serves as transition mold blanks for composite parts such as wing skins, fuselage panels and doors. It is also used for vacuum milling fixtures, stretch‑forming dies for sheet metal and inspection tooling. The monolithic structure eliminates leak paths across the tool surface.

Eptek offers a full product range, including PUcast and EPcast cast systems, PUboard and EPboard board stock, lightweight PUfoam cores, EPmold paste and prepreg systems, iClay styling clay and water‑soluble core material for hollow composite structures. According to the company, the core philosophy is simple: “One less splice, one more measure of manufacturing certainty.”

The original source of this announcement is available from SAMPE China.

This post is courtesy of the CompositesWorld and SAMPE China Insights media partnership. 

Source | GE Aerospace

GE Aerospace (Evendale, Ohio, U.S.) continues to advance toward assembly of the XA102 adaptive cycle engine under the U.S. Air Force’s Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) program, the company announced Sept. 14. The three-stream adaptive cycle engine’s hot section incorporates ceramic matrix composites (CMC) to enable higher turbine temperatures versus metal alloys.

“Our team is working with suppliers to procure hardware and test subcomponents as we prepare for assembly of the first XA102 test asset,” says Jorge Perez, general manager of Edison Works Advanced Combat Engines at GE Aerospace. “With our learnings from the XA100 program as a foundation, we are well positioned to advance adaptive cycle engine technology and support the Air Force’s vision for next-generation propulsion.”

The XA102 was designed from the outset using model-based engineering (MBE) practices with the goal of reducing development time and cost. The company is now extending those model-based capabilities into manufacturing, inspection and assembly, centered on model-based definition (MBD) which conveys complete product definition in machine-readable form for use in downstream manufacturing. The XA102 is the first engine GE Aerospace has built using MBD from design through assembly, replacing traditional 2D drawings with a framework that connects design, manufacturing and inspection through integrated digital models.

GE Aerospace says it is working closely with suppliers to ensure they can use the MBD data in their own manufacturing and inspection processes, and that the approach is intended to strengthen execution across the supply base. Building on experience from the XA100 program, the company is applying lessons learned in adaptive cycle propulsion, thermal management, fuel efficiency and design methods to mature the XA102 ahead of future testing. GE Aerospace reports it has completed demonstrations tied to the MBE practices in the program’s first phase.

CMC in the XA102’s hot section

Beyond the digital engineering focus of this announcement, GE Aerospace has said separately that the XA102’s adaptive cycle design uses new heat-resistant materials, including CMC, to enable higher turbine temperatures and improved performance. The CMC GE has already commercialized is made of silicon carbide ceramic fibers reinforcing a ceramic resin. Roughly one-third the density of nickel alloys, they enable engine designs to divert less cooling air from the flow path and run engines more efficiently at higher thrust.

The XA102’s use of CMC builds on more than a decade of GE Aerospace flight validation work. In 2015, GE ran its first non-static set of CMC parts — rotating low-pressure turbine blades — in an F414 demonstrator engine developed for the Adaptive Engine Technology Demonstrator program with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL, Dayton, Ohio, U.S.). The test endured 500 cycles and marked the material’s move beyond static components, such as turbine shrouds, into the higher-stress rotating sections of the engine. Since beginning CMC development in the early 1990s, GE Aerospace has invested more than $1 billion in the technology. In 2025, it announced further funding of more than $100 million to scale advanced materials, including CMC with major upgrades in its CMC production facilities.

CMC components are already established in GE Aerospace’s commercial engine fleet. CMC turbine shrouds have surpassed 10 million flight hours in the CFM LEAP engine, with more than 100,000 shrouds produced at a dedicated facility in Asheville, North Carolina. The GE9X, GE Aerospace’s largest commercial engine, uses five different CMC parts in its hot section, including components in the combustor and high-pressure turbine.

Source | Gilmour Space Technologies

Queensland-based aerospace companies Gilmour Space Technologies (Australia) and Hypersonix Launch Systems (Brisbane, Australia) have signed an agreement to develop hypersonic flight-test capability for defense and commercial programs in Australia and overseas.

The partnership brings together Gilmour Space’s rocket propulsion, launch, mission integration and flight-test capabilities with Hypersonix’s scramjet propulsion and hypersonic vehicle technology. 

Both companies have composites experience. Hypersonix’s scramjet vehicles use ceramic matrix composite (CMC) components. In July, it helped advance CMC parts capable of withstanding temperatures beyond Mach 5. Gilmour Space is known for its use of carbon fiber on platforms like the Eris 1 rocket and other launch-related systems. This is important, as growing demand for hypersonic testing is being driven by the development of systems and enabling technologies including advanced sensors, communications, guidance systems and high-temperature materials.

Gilmour Space co-founder and CEO Adam Gilmour, says the agreement could give customers more options to develop, test and demonstrate advanced technologies at a greater frequency. “Australia is developing serious expertise in rockets, scramjets and hypersonic flight. The next step is connecting those technologies and giving them a pathway through demonstration and into use,” he explains. “By bringing together our complementary strengths, we can support a broader range of applications, while building sovereign capability that makes Australia a stronger and more valuable partner.”

Hypersonix CEO Matt Hill adds that the partnership could help meet growing international demand for hypersonic test and evaluation and support the development of Australia’s operational capabilities. “Defense customers need more frequent, responsive and accessible ways to test technologies in representative hypersonic conditions,” he says. “Working with Gilmour Space will help us meet this need at pace and scale, while exploring new solutions for Australian and allied programs, including under AUKUS Pillar II.”

Gilmour Space and Hypersonix are portfolio companies of the National Reconstruction Fund Corp.

GKN Aerospace displayed a full-scale mock-up of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) alongside the turbojet engine at The Armed Forces Air Venture 2026, an event held as part of the Swedish Air Force’s centenary celebrations. Source | GKN Aerospace

GKN Aerospace (Birmingham, U.K.) has unveiled a demonstrator for an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV, see image above) less than a year after launching the program, marking the platform’s first public presentation. The aircraft integrates propulsion, aerostructures and systems integration work carried out by GKN Aerospace teams in Sweden, the Netherlands and the U.K.

The program was launched in November 2025 under a contract with the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV), with the goal of developing a UAV demonstrator and dedicated turbojet engine within 18 months. It covers development of the engine, airframe and onboard systems, with the resulting platform intended to support testing and evaluation of future uncrewed aviation technologies.

Sara Eklöf, senior vice president of government solutions at GKN Aerospace, says the experience gained through the effort will carry into the program’s next phase, which includes preparations for future flight-test activities. The initiative builds on GKN Aerospace’s ongoing work with FMV and the Swedish Armed Forces.

GKN composites and UAV expertise

As explained on the GKN Aerospace website, it is a key supplier for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS) programs, including technology leadership in advanced aerostructures and lightweight technologies, which it says has been demonstrated to fit with the requirements of UAV and Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) OEMs.

For General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI), for example, GKN Aerospace designs and builds composite landing gear and the composite tail for the MQ-9B SkyGuardian. The company manufactures lightweight re-usable missile canisters, structural components and missile electrical wiring interconnect systems (EWIS), and leverages a long history of manufacturing high-quality components for manufacturers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. For its missile canisters specifically, GKN Aerospace uses a “unique process of filament winding followed by vacuum infusion.”

Moreover, in 2024, GKN Aerospace announced it would increase the capacity and efficiency of its aeroengines manufacturing facility in Trollhättan, Sweden. A new 5,000-square-meter production area was slated to open in 2026, focusing on the latest digital factory processes, including additional automation, robotics and digital technologies. Aimed to support the ongoing global aerospace industry ramp-up, it reportedly enables GKN Aerospace to increase productivity, improve quality and reduce industry lead times of its engine systems and major structural components. This expansion followed an earlier announcement that GKN Aerospace was also establishing an Additive Fabrication Centre of Excellence in Trollhättan, to support further growth.

GKN Aerospace also had filament winding capability in its Applied Composites AB (ACAB) facility in Linköping, Sweden, which produced drive shafts, pressure vessels and missile components, alongside aerospace engine and structural components (see 2014 CW news). GKN Aerospace sold ACAB to Saab in 2017, but recently signed a new partnership agreement to strengthen its collaboration with Saab, including developing innovative solutions for next-generation fighter aircraft systems. As part of that partnership, GKN Aerospace opened a new office in Linköping, Sweden in spring 2025 (see Linköping Science Park news). 

R&D on filament-wound composite parts — including missile canisters — is also performed using a Taniq (Rotterdam, Netherlands) robot-assisted filament winding machine and winding software. In a 2024 interview with CW, Taniq explained its first system that integrated robotic winding equipment with its TaniqWind Pro software was actually sold to GKN Fokker “for manufacturing of missile cannisters and composite pressure vessels.”

Source | Hexcel Corp.

Hexcel Corp. (Stamford, Conn., U.S.) has successfully qualified its HexWeb HRH-10 aerospace honeycomb through the National Center for Advanced Materials Performance (NCAMP), administered by Wichita State University’s National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR, Wichita, Kan., U.S.). The qualification establishes what Hexcel deems the “aerospace industry’s first NCAMP database for honeycomb core materials,” providing engineers with design-ready material data to streamline structural design, reduce qualification costs and accelerate the adoption of advanced composite structures.

“As aerospace manufacturers work to bring increasingly advanced aircraft, launch vehicles and other aerospace platforms to market, access to trusted engineering data is becoming as important as access to the materials themselves,” says Lyndon Smith, president, Americas and global fibers, Hexcel. “This qualification reflects Hexcel’s commitment to making advanced composites more accessible and accelerating innovation across the aerospace ecosystem.”

Hexcel highlights this new development, plus others at CAMX 2026. 

The qualification extends the proven NCAMP approach beyond composite prepreg systems and makes publicly available engineering data accessible for a widely used aerospace honeycomb material. Hexcel’s HRH-10 honeycomb was selected as the baseline material for the collaborative industry effort to establish a common qualification framework for honeycomb core materials.

The publicly available NCAMP database provides engineers with trusted material data and a common material specification that can be used to support structural design and development. By leveraging a shared qualification database, organizations can reduce the time, cost and effort associated with generating qualification data independently while gaining greater confidence in material selection and structural analysis. The qualification effort also generated additional engineering data to support the design of lightweight honeycomb structures across a range of aerospace applications. The HexWeb HRH-10 qualification database will be available through NCAMP resources published by NIAR.

As a vertically integrated supplier of advanced composites, Hexcel provides customers with a broad portfolio of aerospace materials, including carbon fiber, prepregs, honeycomb core and engineered composite structures. 

Source | Honda Aircraft Co.

Honda Aircraft Co. (Greensboro, N.C., U.S.) has completed its first wing structure for the HondaJet Echelon test unit — an aircraft incorporating the company’s Over the Wing Engine Mount, a composite fuselage and advanced avionics — advancing the program toward mainline final assembly.

The HondaJet Echelon will feature a larger cabin with increased passenger capacity compared to the current HA-420 and is designed to become a single-pilot, certified light jet capable of U.S. transcontinental range. 

The program is targeting first flight in 2028 and type certification and first delivery in 2031. The updated timeline reflects Tier 1 supplier-related schedule adjustments and ongoing development activities, ensuring the aircraft meets the highest standards of quality and performance.

Structural testing activities have advanced with key component tests complete. System integration efforts continue through Honda Aircraft’s Integrated Test Facility, where a fully operational cockpit test environment is supporting active integration campaigns, and a second cockpit is being commissioned to evaluate key aircraft systems prior to the test aircraft taking flight. Manufacturing activities have also accelerated, with more than 70% of parts required for first assembly now on hand and more than 88,400 square feet now provisioned for manufacturing the Echelon.

“The HondaJet Echelon continues to take shape through the dedication and expertise of our associates and numerous OEM supplier partners,” says Amod Kelkar, senior vice president, chief commercial officer and HondaJet Echelon program leader at Honda Aircraft Co. “Completion of the first wing assembly represents an important achievement as we continue advancing testing, systems integration and equipment qualification activity across the program. In spite of some schedule challenges, with steady progress towards the final assembly, we are committed to delivering an aircraft that will redefine light jet performance, efficiency and capability.”

The HondaJet Echelon is planned to incorporate foundational technologies. Features like auto throttle, emergency autoland, autobrake, runway overrun awareness and alerting system (ROAAS), and the advanced steering augmentation system (ASAS) will offer a combination of size, range, safety, productivity, comfort and fuel efficiency.

Source | IFW

The HPCFK research collaboration (Stade, Germany) is expanding its research infrastructure at the CFK NORD site in Stade, Germany, through a new project called RE:LIGHT — REcyclable LIGHTweight Technologies. As highlighted on LinkedIn, the project will focus on circular lightweight materials and resource-efficient manufacturing, laser-based manufacturing, joining and separation technologies for fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites, as well as cognitive and humanoid robotics for flexible production and recycling.

HPCFK unites three German university institutes based at CFK NORD: the Institute of Production Engineering and Machine Tools (IFW) at Leibniz University Hannover (Garbsen), the Institute of Aircraft Design and Lightweight Structures (IFL) at the Technical University of Braunschweig and the Institute of Polymer Materials and Plastics Engineering (PuK) at the Technical University of Clausthal (Clausthal-Zellerfeld). According to IFW’s project page, RE:LIGHT runs from July 2026 through December 2028 and is funded by Lower Saxony’s Ministry of Science and Culture and NBank, drawing on European Regional Development Fund resources under the EU’s Platform for Strategic Technologies for Europe.

The project responds to pressure on aircraft manufacturers to produce lightweight structures more sustainably and economically, even as demand grows for greater production flexibility and part variety and labor shortages push the industry toward new automation approaches. RE:LIGHT aims to build research environments spanning the full thermoplastic lightweight manufacturing process chain — from material development through manufacturing and structural testing to repair, disassembly and recycling — supported by adaptive robotics and assistance systems meant to let researchers test production and recycling processes under near-industrial conditions.

IFW says the expanded infrastructure is meant to give companies, including small and mid-size manufacturers, faster access to test new technologies and reduce development risk as they pursue technology transfer with the university partners. RE:LIGHT as also part of a broader development strategy for CFK NORD: the work complements ongoing research at the site from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Fraunhofer IFAM, together building out complementary research platforms for sustainable and adaptive lightweight technologies.

For more information, visit HPCFK’s project page or IFW’s RE:LIGHT project page.

Source | Impossible Objects

Impossible Objects (Northbrook, Ill., U.S.), a manufacturing technology company bringing the flexibility of 3D printing to industrial-scale production, has announced a $40 million Series B funding round to scale its composite-based additive manufacturing (CBAM) system and meet growing customer demand. Inflection Equity led the financing, with participation from Aaron Wealth Management, OCA Ventures, Impact Capital and Excell Partners.

Using high-speed production and advanced composite materials, including carbon fiber, CBAM can produce strong, lightweight parts at high volume for applications traditionally served by processes such as CNC machining and injection molding, while eliminating the need for expensive tooling and associated costs.

Impossible Objects will use the financing to increase production of its industrial additive manufacturing (AM) systems, expand customer deployments and build out the service and commercial organization required to support a growing installed base. The funding also gives the company the resources to bring its vision to more customers and make it real at scale.

The technology is already moving into customer environments. Since launching the CBAM 25 in early 2025, the company has taken five orders and begun deploying the system across aerospace, defense and advanced manufacturing, including with the U.S. Air Force, the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR), the Oregon Manufacturing Innovation Center and Rochester Institute of Technology. At U.S. Army Rock Island Arsenal, the technology can support production of up to 10,000 drone bodies/month.

According to the company, CBAM 25 is able to print up to 25 layers per minute and is 15X faster than competing production additive technologies. Its process produces composite parts with strength up to 200 megapascals, up to 4X that of competing AM processes, with minimal shrinkage and warpage.

Impossible Objects has also secured $20 million in U.S. government contracts and awards. Its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I and Phase II awards support work on high-strength, long-range drones, additively manufactured composites with strengths comparable to traditional composites manufacturing, integrated wiring inside of AM parts and lightweight aircraft wing and fuselage structures. The company’s technology has also been sold to or deployed with U.S. Army Rock Island Arsenal and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and is included in the U.S. Air Force Technology Roadmap.

“Our CBAM 25 system is designed from the ground up to meet the high productivity and high reliability needs of advanced manufacturing combined with the flexibility and tool-less manufacturing that modern flexible supply chains require,” says Steve Hoover, CEO of Impossible Objects. “We’re seeing high demand for manufacturing that can adapt faster without sacrificing the performance and reliability customers expect in production [read “On the Radar: 3D Printing and the Agile Production Imperative”]. This funding will help us scale to meet that demand.”

Ingersoll Machine Tools and Innse-Berardi, sister companies within the Camozzi Group, introduce the IBPMax S machining platform designed for high-performance machining of large structural aluminum aerospace components. The machine made its debut at IMTS 2026.

Developed to meet the competitive demands of aerospace manufacturers, the IBPMax S has been engineered to combine structural rigidity, dynamic performance and long-term machining accuracy within a single integrated platform. The machine is designed to handle large, complex aluminum structural components faster while maintaining precision and repeatability. The platform features the Tabm E three-axis head designed to offer high productivity, accessibility and machining flexibility.

Rather than functioning as a standalone component, the IBPMax S platform and the multiaxis Tabm E head have been engineered together as a fully integrated solution, allowing manufacturers to reduce machining times while maintaining process stability and accuracy.

The machine combines two key technologies said to significantly reduce machining time:

• Dynamic performance designed to enable full utilization of available spindle power during high-material-removal operations, maximizing productivity in roughing applications.
• A newly developed ABC head with advanced kinematics, enabling multiaxis machining with minimal angular movements, reducing finishing cycle times while promoting outstanding accuracy and surface quality.

The compact design and optimized inclination of the head also improve accessibility inside deep pockets and complex geometries, reducing repositioning requirements and enabling faster, more efficient machining of aerospace structural components.

“When developing the IBPMax S, we started with a clear objective: to help aerospace manufacturers produce more, with greater precision and in less time,” says Mario Orlandi, sales director — IBPMax and aerospace key account manager. “With its innovative technologies, the IBPMax S represents a significant step forward at a time when aerospace manufacturers must increase productivity to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving global market. Our focus was to develop a solution that provides a measurable competitive advantage, enabling customers to achieve higher productivity without compromising quality.”

Ingersoll Machine Tools and Innse-Berardi, sister companies within the Camozzi Group, introduce the IBPMax S machining platform designed for high-performance machining of large structural aluminum aerospace components. The machine made its debut at IMTS 2026.

Developed to meet the competitive demands of aerospace manufacturers, the IBPMax S has been engineered to combine structural rigidity, dynamic performance and long-term machining accuracy within a single integrated platform. The machine is designed to handle large, complex aluminum structural components faster while maintaining precision and repeatability. The platform features the Tabm E three-axis head designed to offer high productivity, accessibility and machining flexibility.

Rather than functioning as a standalone component, the IBPMax S platform and the multiaxis Tabm E head have been engineered together as a fully integrated solution, allowing manufacturers to reduce machining times while maintaining process stability and accuracy.

The machine combines two key technologies said to significantly reduce machining time:

• Dynamic performance designed to enable full utilization of available spindle power during high-material-removal operations, maximizing productivity in roughing applications.
• A newly developed ABC head with advanced kinematics, enabling multiaxis machining with minimal angular movements, reducing finishing cycle times while promoting outstanding accuracy and surface quality.

The compact design and optimized inclination of the head also improve accessibility inside deep pockets and complex geometries, reducing repositioning requirements and enabling faster, more efficient machining of aerospace structural components.

“When developing the IBPMax S, we started with a clear objective: to help aerospace manufacturers produce more, with greater precision and in less time,” says Mario Orlandi, sales director — IBPMax and aerospace key account manager. “With its innovative technologies, the IBPMax S represents a significant step forward at a time when aerospace manufacturers must increase productivity to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving global market. Our focus was to develop a solution that provides a measurable competitive advantage, enabling customers to achieve higher productivity without compromising quality.”

Improving Tool Accessibility, Maximizing Productivity

The IBPMax S is a machining platform intended for the high-performance machining of large, complex structural aluminum components. This fully integrated system contains a new TABM E head, which the companies say delivers productivity improvements of up to 40% compared to conventional solutions.

This single integrated system is designed to maximize productivity, improve tool accessibility within deep pockets and complex geometries and reduce machining times without compromising the accuracy or process reliability standards set by the aerospace sector.

Additionally, Ingersoll is highlighting its Modern Optimization solutions for machine tool life extension. Rather than replacing an entire machine tool, Ingersoll says its upgrades to key technologies like CNC, ram, crossrail and automation systems can affordably modernize machine tools, improve performance and minimize downtime without sacrificing or replacing manufacturers’ valuable assets. 

Attendees can witness the unveiling of the IBMax S at the booth, as well as speak with Ingersoll professionals about modernizing their operations and more.

JetZero's Jet1 Demonstrator, a full-scale blended-wing-body aircraft, is taking shape in partnership with Scaled Composites. Source | JetZero

At the end of August 2026, JetZero (Long Beach, Calif., U.S.) closed a senior secured term loan facility of up to $100 million. The capital extends a run of program milestones for JetZero’s all-wing Z4 aircraft, which is designed for the middle market (~250 passenger capacity for up to 5,000 nautical mile range) and will cut fuel burn and emissions by up to 50% relative to conventional tube-and-wing aircraft at the same passenger capacity.

Proceeds will go towards the acceleration of technology maturation, Demonstrator Jet1 manufacturing and buildout of JetZero’s U.S. manufacturing and test facilities in Greensboro, North Carolina, along with growth and working capital in support of the company’s U.S. operations.

“This facility is targeted for pace,” says Tom O’Leary, JetZero CEO and co-founder. “Through this facility, we will fund tooling and production facilities in North Carolina, advancing aerospace innovation and reindustrialization.” The Z4 is expected to enter service in the early 2030s.

The lender group includes Pinegrove Credit Partners backed by Brookfield and HRTG Partners, alongside Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First-Citizens Bank.

JetZero continues to advance the build of Jet1, its full-scale demonstrator, with Scaled Composites (Mojave, Calif., U.S.), a Northrop Grumman company. The build was 40% complete as of June 2026, with its first flight scheduled for Q4 2027. That same month, JetZero broke ground on Factory1, its Z4 production facility in North Carolina. JetZero will hire more than 14,000 people over 10 years to support the aircraft.

Also read “JetZero Advances Composite BWB Demonstrator Build, Reaches FAA Certification Milestone.”

Thermoplastic composite (TPC) panels manufactured at KVE’s facility in the Netherlands. The automated production cell highlights KVE’s expertise in advanced TPC manufacturing technologies for aerospace and defense applications. Source | KVE 

KVE (The Hague, Netherlands) by Daher celebrates its 30th anniversary and is inaugurating a major expansion of its production facility in The Hague. This milestone marks the beginning of a new phase of growth for the Dutch company, driven by strong aerospace and defense market demand, its expertise in advanced composites and the synergies developed since joining the Daher Group in 2019.

Founded in 1996, KVE specializes in the design, manufacturing and repair of high value-added composite structures. The company primarily serves the defense and aerospace sectors, which account for approximately 80% and 20% of its business, respectively. Its products are used in radar systems, communications equipment, drones, aircraft wings and next-generation rotor blades.

Originally established as an engineering company, KVE has progressively developed its own industrial capabilities and has become a leading European company in induction welding for thermoplastic composites (TPC). This patented technology enables structures to be assembled without rivets or adhesives while reducing weight, costs and production lead times.

Today, KVE holds a portfolio of approximately 20 patents and has secured six new patented innovations during the past 2 years, notably in the fields of radomes, composite blades and thermoplastic welding processes.

Daher’s acquisition of KVE in 2019 marked a pivotal step in the company’s development. KVE’s expertise in TPC and induction welding complemented Daher’s capabilities in the development, industrialization, certification and production of complex aerospace structures. Together, the two companies have established an integrated value chain spanning the design, manufacturing and certification of advanced composite components.

Since 2020, KVE’s revenue has quadrupled and its workforce has tripled. This growth has been supported by strong market demand as well as Daher’s industrial expertise, certification capabilities, investment capacity, business development support and access to major aerospace and defense players. In addition, KVE’s EN9100 certification enables the company to meet the stringent quality and industrial performance requirements of these sectors.

As one of the Daher Group’s first strategic international acquisitions, KVE contributes to Daher’s international growth while providing cutting-edge expertise in advanced composites and thermoplastic technologies. Collaboration between French and Dutch teams promotes knowledge sharing and accelerates innovation in these high-potential fields.

Expanding industrial capabilities, new growth

KVE invested more than €2.5 million between 2025 and 2026 to acquire new equipment, automate manufacturing processes and increase production capacity.

Inaugurated as part of the company’s 30th anniversary celebrations, the new Ypenburg facility — located on the historic site of Dutch aircraft manufacturer Fokker in The Hague — adds nearly 1,800 square meters to KVE’s footprint. The facility will house, among other capabilities, a dedicated production line for blades, wing structures and advanced composite components serving the aerospace and defense sectors. This expansion will enable KVE to support increasing customer production rates while further enhancing the site’s industrial performance and competitiveness.

“KVE’s anniversary is an important milestone, but above all, it marks the beginning of a new chapter,” says Pierre Rouch, managing director of KVE. “Since joining Daher, we have significantly accelerated our development. By combining our expertise in advanced composites with the Daher Group's industrial capabilities, aerospace experience and international presence, we have created an environment that fosters innovation and growth. These new investments will enable us to sustainably support the ramp-up of our customers’ programs.”

KVE intends to continue its development as Daher’s advanced composites solutions incubator. The company will continue investing in industrial capabilities, automation and innovation to support future European aerospace and defense programs while strengthening its position within the Dutch industrial and technology ecosystem.

Source | LOC Industries

LOC Industries Inc. (Warren, Mich., U.S.) plans to add a new 8 × 20-foot autoclave from Taricco Corp. (Long Beach, Calif., U.S.) to its composites operation, with installation expected in Q2 2027. The addition will increase capacity and give the company greater flexibility to support larger and more complex aerospace structures.

The autoclave will also complement LOC Industries’ existing 8 × 15-foot ASC Process Systems autoclave and 8 × 10-foot ASC curing oven. 

The company will install the autoclave alongside a new, roughly 3,500-square-foot high-bay cleanroom, further expanding its composites manufacturing footprint as it positions itself to support continued growth in the aerospace and defense industry.

“We’re proud to continue investing in the equipment, infrastructure and capabilities needed to support our customers today and the programs coming next,” says Derek Kowalski, owner and president of LOC Industries Inc.

Founded in 2009, LOC Industries provides aerospace structures to OEMs and the U.S. military, with parts flying on aircraft including the C-5 Galaxy, B-52 bomber, UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-53. The company’s composites capabilities include autoclave processing and bonding, compression molding, oven curing and complex composite assembly, supported by climate-controlled cleanroom space for layup and fabrication.

LOC Industries is AS9100D-certified and Nadcap-accredited for composites, and is actively looking to onboard additional aerospace and defense customers as it expands capacity for both existing production programs and new opportunities. The company currently operates from a 65,000-square-foot facility in Warren, north of Detroit

Source | Getty Images

Massivit has launched RapidWings — a turnkey composite manufacturing platform designed to help defense and aerospace manufacturers reduce production lead times and tooling costs. Built on Massivit’s Cast-In-Motion (CIM) technology, the platform is already operational in Israel and is currently scaling its operations globally.

RapidWings is designed to significantly compress composite tooling lead times. In some cases, processes that previously took 3 months are now said to take a matter of days. RapidWings partners have reported up to 70% savings in cost versus conventional metal and machinable-board tooling.

Against the backdrop of surging defense budgets worldwide, OEMs and manufacturing primes in the defense industry have suffered backlogs due to unstable supply chains and outsourcing constraints. Over the past year, Massivit has received increasing demand for manufacturing services from defense buyers in Europe, the U.S., Southeast Asia and India. The company is establishing RapidWings as a global network of local, on-demand, sovereign production facilities to overcome recognized manufacturing bottlenecks in the defense arena.

The RapidWings network will consist of regional partnerships — Joint Manufacturing Alliances (JMAs) — with certified Tier 2 composites manufacturing facilities. By embedding Massivit’s CIM digital tooling capability into established manufacturing facilities, JMA partners will have the opportunity to accelerate and scale production without additional capital expenditure.

The first JMA — between Israel-based Comparts Ltd. and Massivit — is currently fully operational, with ongoing defense engagements serving leading OEMs. According to numerous defense programs completed to date, the RapidWings platform has been shown to overcome backlogs by significantly shortening production tooling lead times from months to days, Massivit reports. The RapidWings model enables JMA partners to retain full operational control of their existing business and customer relationships while acquiring the capability to accept a greater volume of orders. Results of programs completed thus far are said to have revealed a 40-70% reduction in tooling costs as compared to conventional tooling methods.

Massivit is currently accepting applications from qualified composite manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe to join its expanding RapidWings network.

“Defense is a necessity worldwide,” says Yossi Azarzar, CEO of Massivit. “By cutting manufacturing times, RapidWings’ technology could save defense and aeronautical companies months and millions. RapidWings marks a strategic milestone for Massivit as we pivot from providing industrial 3D printers to delivering a much-needed defense manufacturing platform that overcomes bottlenecks and empowers manufacturers to scale.”

Sources (clockwise from top left, not including logo) | CW/Stewart Mitchell, CW/Stewart Mitchell, Greene Tweed, iCOMAT, CW/Stewart Mitchell, Hill Helicopters

Composites are “Built to Scale” as this year’s National Composites Week (NCW) theme points out — and this is especially important in today’s aviation industry.

As CW executive editor Ginger Gardiner reports in “Composites End Markets: Aviation and Advanced Air Mobility (2026),” commercial airliner OEMs are targeting increased deliveries this year versus 2025 across aircraft product lines, using a variety of methods in an effort to meet rate from activating new production lines, to expanding footprints in key markets like India, to improving manufacturing productivity via automation and digitization. 

At the same time, next-generation aviation technologies are in various stages of development, from the anticipated next-generation single-aisle aircraft, to novel blended wing designs, to hydrogen-powered aircraft and the many players in the emerging advanced air mobility (AAM) market. All of these will require, and are enabling, new innovations in the composites space, from processes with faster processing capabilities to aviation-grade thermoplastic composites (TPC) for increasingly large parts and more.

To celebrate all of the above, check out some of this year’s top articles and news stories focused on high-rate aviation manufacturing technologies:

Composites End Markets: Aviation and Advanced Air Mobility (2026)

Market outlook highlights commercial, defense and bizjet upturn, shift to Asia/rise of India while supply chain struggles to meet rate, AAM begins pivot toward commercial routes plus trends in civil UAS, electric aircraft and the latest in composites developments. (CW editor note: For a high-level look at all things aviation, start here.)

Farnborough International Airshow 2026: Progressing the Composite Advantage

At the 2026 Farnborough International Airshow, the focus on next-generation aircraft propulsion, eVTOL and battery-electric aerospace emphasized process and architecture. In particular, it highlighted how structures are placed, cured and protected — rather than focusing solely on the material itself.

GKN Aerospace's ASPIRE Program Targets Next-Gen Composite Wing Manufacturing Technologies

The three-year, £12 million ASPIRE consortium brings together rapid tow shearing, tailored fiber placement, aligned discontinuous rCF and self-heated tool curing to prove a lighter, high-rate composite wings for the next-generation single-aisle aircraft.

A Sector Under Pressure: Aerostructures, Insourcing and the Future of Composites

For two decades, the aerostructures industry has lagged behind the rest of aerospace on margins. Rising insourcing, vanishing Super Tier 1s and post-pandemic strain are reshaping the supply chain — with major consequences for composites.

Using Pi Joints to Expand a Composite Wing's Flight Envelope

DarkAero replaced butt joints in the center wing box assembly to increase the flight test envelope for its DarkAero 1 prototype composite aircraft.

Cutting Engine Weight via Thermoplastic Composite Guide Vanes

Greene Tweed replaces metal stator vanes with its DLF material co-molded with a metal leading edge that meets performance, cost and high-rate production targets while cutting 4 kg per engine.

One-Shot Compression Molding Enables Main Rotor Blades that Achieve 20,000 Hours Between Overhauls

Hill Helicopters engineered composite main rotor blades using a novel single-cure manufacturing process for stiffness and mass distribution optimization.

Top-viewed composites aviation news of 2026 so far:

• Composite Aerostructures Suppliers Pitch Thermoplastics, Automation for Next Narrowbody
• Alef Aeronautics’ Composites-Intensive Flying Car Enters Production Phase
• Honda Hits Milestone with Successful First eVTOL Aircraft Flight
• Joby Plans to Double U.S. eVTOL Manufacturing Capacity
• Janicki Selects Great Falls, Montana for $800M Manufacturing Campus Expansion
• Engel Develops Automated High-Rate Process for TPC Drone Blades
• JetZero Advances Composite BWB Demonstrator Build, Reaches FAA Certification Milestone
• Aerospace and Defense Startup Hybron Closes $25 Million Seed Round

For more aviation and AAM content, visit compositesworld.com/topics/aerospace.

Source | Noemi Aerospace

Syensqo (Brussels, Belgium) has been selected as a materials partner by Noemi Aerospace (Bergen, Norway) for its all-electric amphibious aircraft, with the ambition of becoming the world’s first certified fully electric amphibious seaplane.

Designed to carry nine passengers and operate from water and conventional runways, the aircraft is being developed for regional transport as well as cargo, search and rescue and medical evacuation missions. Its amphibious capability is intended to provide access to routes and communities where conventional aviation infrastructure may be limited.

For an electric seaplane operating in demanding coastal and marine environments, structural integrity, weight efficiency and durability are critical. Noemi’s material selection reflects the need to combine high structural performance with the processing flexibility required for large composite structures.

Under the agreement, NOEMI Aerospace will use Syensqo’s MTM 45-1 carbon fiber prepreg in the aircraft’s airframe, together with AeroPaste structural paste adhesive for wing assembly, supporting the development of lightweight, high-performance structures as the aircraft progresses toward certification.

“We wanted to manufacture the wing skins and spars in a 21-meter single span, so we needed an out-of-autoclave [OOA] material with proven performance,” says Simon Bendrey, chief engineer of Noemi Aerospace. “Syensqo’s MTM 45-1 is a primary structure-capable material with FAA approval and independently verified NCAMP data. We have a solution that will support our certification approach while helping us achieve the low structural weight required for our first prototype aircraft. We will also use Syensqo’s AeroPaste structural adhesive to bond the wing components and achieve the performance we need.”

Sources (top left, clockwise) | Addyx srl, NordSpace, NLR and Hydrogen in Aviation (HIA) Alliance

STRATO-V project

Source | Addyx srl

Addyx (Chieti, Italy), Comec Innovative and Università degli Studi dell'Aquila have held the kick-off meeting for the Structured Tank Reinforced with Advanced TOwpreg – Type 5 (STRATO-V) project to develop a new generation of Type 5 linerless pressure vessels, focusing on innovative materials, advanced composite technologies and digital engineering tools to obtain increasingly lighter, high-performance and sustainable solutions. The project is carried out with the contribution of the ERDF Program 2021/2027 (Intervention 1.1.1.2 and Intervention 1.1.2.1). Learn more here.

Source | NordSpace

NordSpace’s first linerless Type 5 pressure vessel in Canada

NordSpace (Markham, Ontario, Canada) has manufactured what it says is Canada’s first linerless, cryogenic-compatible Type 5 composite pressure vessel produced using automated fiber placement (AFP). The vessel will undergo destructive testing before the company scales the process up to orbital-size tanks this summer at its Advanced Manufacturing for Aerospace Lab (AMA Lab).

Read more: “NordSpace installs robotic AFP systems, progresses build of launch vehicle tanks and primary structures.”

The work was carried out with the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada and supports NordSpace's Tundra and Tempest orbital launch vehicles, which will rely on the same composite-overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) technology for flight tanks and primary structures. The milestone accompanies a broader build-out of the company’s vertically integrated manufacturing capability, including new large-scale robotic AFP systems intended to domestically produce lighter, higher-performance pressure vessels for Canada’s orbital launch program.

Hydrogen in Aviation report notes accelerated development, urges investment

Source | Hydrogen In Aviation

The Hydrogen in Aviation (HIA) Alliance — its members include Airbus, Rolls-Royce, easyJet, GKN Aerospace, Intelligent Energy and Bristol Airport — has published a report finding that the U.K. has built an early lead in hydrogen-powered aviation through technology demonstrations, regulatory groundwork and long-term R&D investment, but warns that gaps in liquid hydrogen supply, airport infrastructure and the research-to-commercialization pathway could let other nations overtake that position.

The report calls for a National Hydrogen Flight Program to coordinate industry, regulators and government departments, alongside targeted airport infrastructure funding, continued aerospace R&D support beyond TRL 6 and a dedicated aviation hydrogen supply plan. It cites recent milestones including Rolls-Royce and easyJet’s completed 4-year hydrogen gas turbine demonstration — which ran a Pearl 15 engine on 100% hydrogen through a full flight cycle — and GKN Aerospace’s H2GEAR-derived cryogenic power distribution work, much of which depends on composite pressure vessels and cryogenic tank technology for hydrogen storage and delivery.

Source | NLR

NLR hydrogen drone demonstration at Rotterdam airport

Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) and Rotterdam The Hague Airport (RTHA), working with partners in the European TULIPS – Green Airports program, flew a drone powered by liquid hydrogen at the airport, marking the first demonstration of a liquid hydrogen application at an operational Dutch airport. The test exercised the full supply chain — storage, fueling and application — using NLR’s HYDRA-II drone as a research platform and drawing on the liquid hydrogen storage facility the two organizations previously built at RTHA.

NLR CTO Martin Nagelsmit says the work feeds into the organization’s PHYREX project, which is converting an electric Pipistrel Velis Electro research aircraft to fly on liquid hydrogen, with first test flights targeted for 2027. TULIPS operates under the EU’s Clean Aviation initiative, pairing airports with knowledge institutions and companies to develop and test aviation technologies, including cryogenic storage and fuel delivery systems that liquid hydrogen aircraft depend on.

PAL-V FlyDrive vehicles configured for emergency response and Dutch fire brigade operations, displayed in drive and flight mode at the company's headquarters in the Netherlands. Source | PAL-V

Dutch company Personal Air Landing Vehicle (PAL-V, Raamdonksveer) has obtained European Production Organization Approval (POA) for its composite FlyDrive mobility solution, authorizing the company to manufacture aviation products under EASA regulations. With this milestone, PAL-V now holds both automotive and aviation production approvals required to manufacture its products on an industrial scale. 

PAL-V has ensured compliance with existing regulations across all areas of its development program. With the achievement of its POA, PAL-V has successfully completed several critical certification milestones, including receiving a “No Technical Objection” from the EASA in 2025.

POA confirms that PAL-V’s production system meets the stringent requirements for airworthy manufacturing. “It confirms that we have not only developed a groundbreaking platform for FlyDrive products but have also built an organization capable of developing, certifying and manufacturing airworthy products,” says Robert Dingemanse, CEO of PAL-V. 

PAL-V plans to integrate developments in autonomous flight, advanced materials and components, and zero-emission propulsion systems.

Parpas America Corp. showcases its milling machine technology designed for high-precision applications in aerospace, mold and die and other demanding manufacturing sectors.

Parpas America Corp. showcases its milling machine technology designed for high-precision applications in aerospace, mold and die and other demanding manufacturing sectors.

DM3D’s patented laser direct metal deposition technology enables the company to 3D print large, complex parts for aerospace and space clients from a variety of metals, like this 3D printed turbine casing made from stainless steel. Source: Additive Manufacturing Media (all images)

From producing large format parts to developing direct energy deposition (DED) systems of its own, contract manufacturer and metal additive manufacturing (AM) solutions provider DM3D has leveraged 3D printing to accelerate production for space clients like NASA.

Shifting to Metal AM

When DM3D first opened the doors to its Auburn Hills, Michigan, facility in 2013, the company specialized in both tool and die building and refurbishment, particularly for the automotive industry. However, the one-off business and off-shoring associated with tool and die, an interest in the aerospace market, and 20+ years of experience with AM eventually led president Bhaskar Dutta to shift DM3D’s focus to metal AM.

With a background in DED, Dutta saw an opportunity to scale metal AM production for space and aerospace clients in-house. DM3D has thus developed its own DED technology and patented direct metal deposition (DMD) systems for large-format additive manufacturing (LFAM) production, which it also sells to additive manufacturers.

Now, as well as from production with its own systems, all packaging and shipping operations occur within its Auburn Hills facility. Additionally, most postprocessing is conducted using the company’s multiple in-house CNC and EDM machines, while some extra-large parts are outsourced for finishing.

Direct Metal Deposition (DMD)

DM3D 3D prints with a variety of metals, including stainless steel, Inconel and alloys like aluminum, titanium and copper. Its patented laser DMD technology has been especially useful in these instances, as it is designed to handle a diverse range of metal materials. 

Intended for the production of complex geometries, DMD is a metal AM process that utilizes a focused laser energy source to melt and deposit metal powder or wire layer-by-layer. This process is conducted through the repetition of the following steps: 

1. Material feedstock: Fine metal powders or continuous metal wire are used as feedstock material.
   

   DMD enables DM3D to 3D print with copper alloys, resulting in space components like this combustion chamber manufactured from a copper alloy. 

2. Energy source: Material is melted as it exits the system’s nozzle using a high-powered laser beam.
3. Meltpool formation: When the energy source melts incoming metallic feedstock, a molten pool is formed.
4. Layer-by-layer deposition-: A CAM-controlled positioning system directs the nozzle and energy source to deposit the molten metal onto the substrate or deposited layer, requiring great precision.
5. Solidification: After the quick cooling and solidification of the molten metal, it bonds with the surrounding material to form a dense layer.

LFAM Parts for Low-Volume Industries

For industries that require low volumes of large parts, AM can reduce both costs and lead times associated with production. For this reason, DM3D initially targeted low-volume industries like space and aerospace.

“There was a lead time reduction with the elimination of the tool and die making process,” says Dutta. “For low-volume production and prototyping, additive manufacturing is very cost-effective.”

The company has since 3D printed some of the largest additively manufactured metal components for rocket engines for clients like NASA and other private space companies. As a candidate part, DM3D 3D printed NASA’s RS-25 engine nozzle liner — which stood at 111 inches tall with a 97-inch-diameterbase — using a multi-nozzle DMD system that it had specifically designed for this use case. 

A nozzle jacket 3D printed from Inconel for NASA.  

Following the initial design process, DM3D and NASA simulated the part’s possible thermal, stress and distortion throughout the build process using ANSYS 3D simulation software. Using its DED technology, the liner was then 3D printed. Later, the completed liner passed a structured light geometric inspectional scan.

Leveraging AM to produce the liner resulted in more than 50% reduction in lead time and 25% in cost compared to conventional production methods. According to DM3D, its multi-nozzle DMD system doubled the throughput by using two simultaneously operating process heads, while also harnessing the ability to add two more process heads if necessary.

For clients across various industries, DM3D has positioned itself as a one-stop-shop for AM services and solutions. Being a small company, DM3D carefully chooses the applications it serves in favor of resource conservation. In the near future, the company is looking to become qualified for wire technology and to qualify titanium parts for production, as titanium castings are becoming increasingly difficult for manufacturers to source, expanding its capabilities to serve more applications.

Source | Renegade Materials Corp.

Raven cure simulation is now available for Renegade Materials Corp.’s (Miamisburg, Ohio, U.S.) RM-2014-LDk-Tk low dielectric epoxy resin system, providing engineers with an additional digital tool to support the design and processing of low dielectric structures.

Raven, developed by Convergent Manufacturing Technologies (Vancouver, BC, Canada), is a process simulation platform that enables engineers to evaluate material cure behavior under different processing conditions. The capability complements the extensive material design data already available for Renegade’s NCAMP-qualified RM-2014-LDk-Tk-4581 prepreg system.

RM-2014-LDk-Tk-4581 is qualified to the NCAMP NMS201/1 material specification, with publicly available mechanical design allowables and dielectric property data. Together, NCAMP design data and Raven simulation provide engineers with complementary resources from material selection and component design through process development and manufacturing. By reducing the need to independently generate design data and supporting earlier evaluation of processing conditions, these tools can help reduce development time, cost and risk.

For example, an engineer developing an aerospace radome can use the NCAMP data to evaluate RM-2014-LDk-Tk-4581 against the structural and electrical requirements. As the design progresses toward manufacturing and certification, Raven can be used to evaluate cure behavior under proposed processing conditions before moving into physical trials. This can accelerate the design-build-certify cycle, an increasingly valuable capability for aerospace and defense programs operating on aggressive development schedules.

“Providing customers with high-performance material is only part of what we want to accomplish,” says Thomas Sutter, director of sales, Renegade Materials Corp. “Our goal is to give engineers the data and tools they need to confidently design with our materials and transition those designs into manufacturing.”

Find the NCAMP specifications and design allowables here.

Source | Bally Ribbon Mills (BRM)

Bally Ribbon Mills (BRM, Bally, Pa., U.S.) is showcasing its high-quality, high-performance composite products. BRM experts will be on hand to discuss the company’s 3D woven joints, thermal protection systems (TPS) and other 3D structures.

BRM was named a 2016 JEC Innovation Award winner in the “Space” category, recognizing the company’s contributions to advanced composite technology for space-related applications. The award underscores BRM’s longstanding expertise in developing engineered woven solutions that help meet critical performance requirements while supporting lightweight, efficient composite structures.

Using 3D continuous weaving, BRM creates new joint structures and improves existing designs. The company’s 3D woven joints are available in Pi (π), double-T, H and other complex net shapes. Designed to deliver strength, durability and structural integrity, these woven shapes help reduce component weight and cost without sacrificing performance.

Because reinforcement is integrated throughout all three dimensions of the weave, BRM’s 3D woven structures support load paths across joined substructures. The architecture of each woven shape can be tailored to the needs of the overall structure and its individual components.

BRM’s 3D woven composites are also well suited for aerospace TPS. These mission-critical components are used in demanding heat shield applications, including space exploration vehicles. By varying yarn types, density, thickness, width and resin systems, BRM can develop customizable woven composite solutions for specific thermal and structural requirements.

In partnership with NASA, BRM developed 3D orthogonally woven 3DMAT quartz material for Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle compression pads. The material was named the 2023 NASA Government Invention of the Year. BRM’s work with NASA demonstrates the value of collaboration between the agency and U.S. small businesses with specialized technical capabilities that support current and future exploration efforts.

Beyond thermal protection applications, BRM’s 3D woven components support aircraft engine and other structural applications. Replacing traditional metallic parts with woven carbon fiber composite structures reduces weight and life cycle costs while meeting stringent manufacturing and performance requirements.

Seyer Industries, a manufacturer of complex aerospace, defense and industrial components, has ordered a second Starrag STC 1800 machining center to expand capacity for demanding large-component and hard-metal applications.

With the order, Seyer Industries will operate four Starrag machining centers: two Heckert HEC 800 X5 machining centers and two STC 1800 machining centers. The repeat investment builds on the precision, reliability and productivity achieved with the company’s existing Starrag equipment.

The additional STC 1800 will increase Seyer Industries' capacity to machine large titanium, stainless-steel and high-performance-alloy components while maintaining the tight tolerances and quality standards required for aerospace and defense applications. Its large work envelope will also help the company address customer demand for large, complex titanium components.

“The performance of our Starrag machines has played an important role in supporting our growth strategy,” says Mark Seyer, president of Seyer Industries. “The precision, reliability and productivity we have achieved with our existing equipment gave us confidence to invest again. Adding another STC 1800 strengthens our ability to take on increasingly complex programs while maintaining the quality and delivery performance our customers expect.”

For Starrag, the repeat order reflects the value of a long-term relationship built on machine performance, technical expertise and collaboration.

“A repeat order is one of the strongest endorsements a machine-tool supplier can receive,” says Tim Mooney, sales manager at Starrag. “The additional STC 1800 reflects Seyer Industries’ confidence not only in the machine's performance, but also in the technical support and collaboration behind it.”

Daher’s Highly Loaded Thermoplastic Wing Rib program has produced and tested a 64-ply thick single-aisle aircraft wing rib comprising two L-shaped components produced by its patented Direct Stamping process and joined using LIST’s patented infrared (IR) welding process. Source (All Images) | Daher and (lower left) LIST

Airbus’ next-generation single aisle (NGSA) program is on track for launch in 2030 with entry into service by 2035-2040. The preparation program, called eAction, includes “a lot of research and technology development, comparison of technology solutions, pre-projects and simulations,” says Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, noting ongoing work with partners to review options for wings, fuselage, propulsion and industrial systems.

This activity includes thermoplastic composites (TPC), discussed in Aviation Week’s article, “Composite aerostructures suppliers pitch thermoplastics, automation for next narrowbody.” It explains that TPC offers shorter production cycles and welded assembly requiring just ≈15 minutes per join versus multi-hour thermoset (TS) cure cycles. Tier 1 aerostructures supplier Daher (Nantes, France) is highlighted in the article and is also a partner in the Spider research project — part of the French government-funded CORAC program — targeting stamping presses capable of handling parts up to 4 × 3 meters. Daher is also developing TPC pylon fairings, made by converting an end-of-life A380 engine pylon cowl into a smaller panel for A320neo pylons. This project — a collaboration with Airbus, Tarmac Aerosave and Toray Advanced Composites — demonstrates how Airbus also sees TPC as a path to circularity for composite aerostructures.

The baseline composite wing for NGSA could include TPC ribs in a TS box. This approach is already used in A320 elevators and more such hybrid structures are expected (see “The era of TPC”). Daher has produced TPC ribs for Airbus’ Wing of Tomorrow (WOT) program, which has completed three 17-meter ground test demonstrators. After exploring the advantages of increased wingspan and more than 100 manufacturing and assembly technologies, the WOT has now entered a flight test phase.

Targeting a rib better optimized for the longer, slender wing shapes WOT is now testing, Daher launched the Highly Loaded Thermoplastic Wing Rib project in 2021. This project, part of the CORAC (Conseil pour la Recherche Aéronautique Civile) iniative funded by the DGAC (French Civil Aviation Authority), was achieved with partners Victrex (Cleveleys, U.K.), Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg), Cetim (Saint-Étienne, France) and AniForm Engineering B.V. (Enschede, Netherlands). The award-winning rib features up to 64 plies (12 millimeters) of unidirectional (UD) carbon fiber-reinforced LMPAEK polymer material from Victrex and integrates two key technologies: Daher’s patented Direct Stamping — which eliminates the consolidation step after layup — and the LIST-patented process for infrared (IR) welding.

Dimensions and design features of Daher's thick thermoplastic composite (TPC) rib including ply drops.

Compared to a machined aluminum reference, the 1,400 × 380 × 12-millimeter-thick TPC welded rib with varying thickness reduces weight by 22%. Compared to a TPC bolted rib, it reduces the production cycle by 25% and cost by 15% while meeting the high‑rate (75-100 aircraft/month) targeted for NGSA and other future aircraft. It also reduces emissions by 12.5 tonnes of CO_₂ per rib over a single‑aisle aircraft’s lifetime, and Daher has already demonstrated recyclability/circularity with Airbus on the A320 pylons and in the carbon fiber/PPS brake pedals for its TBM general aviation aircraft, made using waste from its production of stamped TPC clips and brackets for the Airbus A350.

Why a thick rib program?

“Because we were one of the last partners to enter the WOT project, we had 2 years less than the other partners to design and produce a rib,” says Dominique Bailly, director of R&D for Daher. “Thus, we were more conservative on what could be done to optimize that part.” Daher was actually the first partner to deliver TPC wing ribs and vacuum bag-only (VBO) TS spars to Airbus U.K. for the full-scale wing demonstrator at the end of 2020. “But we knew there were improvements possible in the rib’s design, weight, cost and producibility for high production rates. That’s why we launched another effort to continue optimizing the initial results we achieved in the WOT, but on our own.”

Because this was not an Airbus program, the team decided to start with a generic metallic wing rib based on a Daher design. “First, we performed the analysis to optimize that metallic rib,” notes Bailly, “and then we used that as our basis to develop a more optimized TPC rib.”

Stamped and welded thick TPC rib prior to testing.

Why is it so thick (up to 64 plies/12 millimeters)? “Composites are key to achieving the new long and thin wing designs being tested for NGSA, which enable the reduced drag and fuel consumption being demanded,” says Bailly. “This new rib has been developed to meet those goals and it will see more load than ribs used in aircraft today. Our challenge was to make the same part in TPC but with improved weight, production rate and cost. And even though we’ve created a structure with 64 plies, we’ve also proven it weighs less and generates less CO₂ than the metallic rib. That also is the power of optimized composites and welding — even with the same loads, the machined metallic rib is still 22% heavier.”

The resulting thick TPC rib has received awards, but Bailly says Daher sees where it can still be improved and is pursuing further developments.

Materials and design

Performance in welding and forming were key considerations in Daher’s choice for the TPC material. “The Daher WOT wing rib design is full of fasteners,” says Bailly. “But we have the ability to address that, being one of the few companies in the world that can weld highly structural TPC parts. We wanted to use this ability to eliminate or significantly reduce fasteners, and also incorporate our patented Direct Stamping process to reduce cycle time and cost.”  

“At the beginning of the project, we had studied the different resins on the market, including PEEK and PAEK from a variety of suppliers,” explains Martin Denize, composite R&T project manager at Daher. “LMPAEK was the best candidate for weldability but also regarding degradation versus time at process temperature. The Victrex material was our best choice for this program and we fully characterized it to have the input data needed for simulation.”

With partner AniForm, Daher completed simulations to predict warping (top), buckling (bottom) and other defects, including deformation of parts after stamping.

Process and part simulation were indeed vital, aided by project partner AniForm. “We’ve worked with them for 5-6 years,” says Denize. “Their model to predict defects in stamped TPC parts is well-developed for fabric materials and is advancing UD materials.” Years ago, as Daher began manufacturing more complex geometry parts, it wanted to accurately predict defects like wrinkles. In this project, Daher not only worked with AniForm on further developing defect prediction, but also a new model to predict deformation of the parts after stamping.

“We often talk about springback,” Denize explains, “for example, the way the angle of an L- or U-shape will be more closed or open compared to the theoretical part due to thermal stress during molding. This AniForm model helps to predict these effects as well as any warpage or twist in the part.” For the moment, this model is still in development, he notes. “We have a research agreement with AniForm to help advance this capability for their commercial software.”

Development of the thick TPC rib iterated through several loops between the design team and the process team. “We began with a simple L-shaped part,” says Denize, “because our rib is basically two stamped L-shapes welded together. We first modeled only one of these, but featuring the high thickness — which is not constant but varies — including ply drops and pickups. We then progressed to warpage prediction for the full-scale rib. Next, we tested the rib in compression, shear and for buckling resistance, and refined the design based on the results. The AniForm software also helped us to make certain choices because we could see that some geometries were not able to be stamped or had a high risk of defects. Using the UD material meant that not every shape could be stamped. So, we again refined the design and the stamping process.”

Direct Stamping

Daher has developed its Direct Stamping for 15 years including 13 patents.

Daher has produced stamped TPC parts for the A350 for 15 years. During that time, it has also developed and continued to refine its Direct Stamping process including applications and awards for 13 patents.

Automated fiber placement (AFP) is used to create the flat blank via fast layup that minimizes waste, explains Bailly. “We then use the stamping press to create the 3D shape and finish consolidation simultaneously. But the AFP parameters must be tuned to fit with the stamping. We don’t just lay a flat preform and put it in the press. Compared to conventional stamping, everything is different with Direct Stamping — from the part design to the AFP process to the way you stamp. All of the parameters must be aligned to reach the required level of quality and mechanical performance.”

Automated fiber placement (AFP) before Direct Stamping integrates Daher’s patented slit tape transfer solution.

“We produced a lot of reference samples with a classic stamping process using oven consolidation,” explains Denize, “and we compared those to Direct Stamping at every step in order to tune the AFP and stamping parameters to have the same performance. We also had to optimize Direct Stamping for high thickness; the process works easily for thin parts but had to be modified for these thick parts. This included a campaign to validate the inner quality and mechanical performance of the part.”

“We also patented a smart way to transfer the parts from the oven to the press that eliminates the need for polyimide film,” says Denize. “We thus improved the buy-to-fly ratio by generating less material waste but also by minimizing the need for such auxiliary materials required for vacuum bagging plus sealants required for fasteners.”

IR welding

“We knew we wanted to use welding,” says Bailly, “but also that our in-house solution for induction welding would be very challenging for the thick laminate. As the web of the rib is flat, we began discussions with LIST, which had proposed IR welding as a solution for large, flat surfaces.”

KVE Composites and Daher exhibited a full-scale welded TPC torsion box at JEC Word 2024. Source | “Thermoplastic composite welding advances ...” and CW

He points out that the induction welding Daher performed on the full-scale torsion box (based on the company’s TBM aircraft) exhibited at JEC World 2024 was a maximum width of 20 millimeters. “That works well for welding complex surfaces, but IR welding seemed a better fit for larger surfaces to achieve high-quality welds with a minimum number of welding passes,” he explains.

After heating both surfaces to be welded, the IR lamps are removed, the press is closed quickly and the parts are welded. 

Bailly says IR welding is automated and robust — both important characteristics for high-rate production — controlled by its key process parameters: temperature, time and pressure. “The basics are simple,” he explains. “You have two parts fixtured in a press — one on bottom and one on top. IR lamps are placed in between to heat both surfaces. You then remove the lamps, quickly close the press and the parts are welded.” Masks are used to isolate heat to only the surfaces being welded on each part, with general weld time between 5 and 20 minutes for the Daher thick rib.

The team will look at further industrializing the machine setup, says Bailly, “but for welding flat surfaces to each other, this is a good solution because you don’t have to push the power through the material thickness — you only heat the surface — so the thickness of the two parts does not have a big impact on the time required to heat the parts. For this type of thick rib, it’s perfect. It could also work well for smaller parts.”

It does have limits, he concedes, such as part size and shape complexity. “You still must apply pressure during welding to have the surfaces in contact,” he explains, “and when you push vertically on a curved surface, the pressure will vary due to the angle. You also need to have high-quality components with accurate geometry and collect all the process data for statistical process control.”

Bailly points out there is currently no confirmed nondestructive test (NDT) method for the interface of welded joints. “This is an important step. There are some prototype solutions to verify that you have the right level of adhesion between the two parts in the weld line, but we have identified other possible solutions and are working to evaluate those.”

Process integration, testing and wave design

The biggest challenge in this development was maturing the Direct Stamping and IR welding processes for this thick part, says Bailly. Denize agrees, noting that with IR welding, “we started at TRL 1. We wanted to end with a full-scale part that would pass mechanical testing, so we had to adapt the processes for this ambitious rib design and then validate the part performance and quality throughout.”

“We also validated the quality and mechanical performance of the material at every step of the testing pyramid,” he continues, “from coupon size to level two and three samples for stress, up to subscale, then full scale. We have done the complete test pyramid, which you don’t see very often. You see a lot of demonstrators, but not a lot of information about testing and performance.”

“Results from our CARAC TP program enabled us to directly target the right process windows for AFP and stamping,” says Denize, “reducing the number of tests we had to perform to reach the desired performance. It supported our need to go fast in this project but has also helped in other projects. We are always looking at the CARAC TP results to have a starting point for tests, and also to help choose the right materials, including ensuring they can withstand the environmental constraints of the part, such as higher temperatures near the engine.”

The rib design evolved to include the wave shape in the lower L-shaped part and top contour that follows holes for systems installation, eliminating extra material and reducing weight.

“For the IR welding, we completed the whole test pyramid again to validate the process across the part,” says Denize. “Before we reached the final shape and weld design, we evaluated different welding thickness jumps and wave shapes in the lower L-shaped part. We also evolved that part’s contoured design to follow holes for systems installation in parallel with the welding tests. Our goal was to validate the process, but we were also optimizing the quantity of thermoplastic material via the shape to have just the right amount of material and where we needed it.”

Denize explains that extra material and length would be needed if the rib used fasteners, “because of the distance required between the fastener and the contour of the part. But you don’t need that when using welding to join the parts. So, you not only eliminate the weight of the fasteners, but also the extra material required.”

Machining of mouse holes

Rendering of machining mouse holes into welded, thick TPC ribs. Source | Daher

Machining system access holes into the thick, welded TPC rib was also a challenge. As explained by Daher composite machining expert, Sébastien Louvel, in an April 2026 article, conventional approaches, including tooling that relies solely on vacuum clamping, no longer work on these parts, where cutting forces can reach 1,000 newtons.

“They [parts] also remain highly sensitive to vibrations,” he says, noting that poor clamping quickly leads to degraded quality or even tool breakage. Vibration control becomes even more critical for high‑rate production. All parameters must be considered, and a holistic process approach is needed, which includes cutting assistance, chip management, instrumentation and data collection. “Based on physical measurements during preliminary trials, we specified the equipment now installed at our Shap’in TechCenter,” says Louvel, “and this system is fully instrumented to prepare for future production monitoring.”

This is essential, he adds, because small‑diameter cutters are not suitable when machining 12- to 24-millimeter thicknesses. “Instead, we use tools with diameters of 12 or 16 millimeters. These are more heavily loaded and more expensive, so monitoring is key to ensure tool life and process stability. Our industrial production today is based on proven tooling designs validated on numerous prototypes to guarantee reliability, stability and repeatability without vibration issues or tool failures.”

Full part testing and certification

One end goal for Daher’s thick rib development program is a full part mechanical test to prove its performance and parity with the classic stamping process, notes Denize. Cetim was the partner for this full-scale testing.

 

 

Tested at Cetim, the full rib was subjected to simultaneous compression and shear load via actuators, painted for digital image correlation and equipped with numerous sensors.

Initial results in June showed the part survived beyond ultimate load without failure under combined loading conditions representative of what this rib would see in a single-aisle aircraft wing. The rib was subjected simultaneously to 25 tonnes of compression and 25 tonnes of shear on a test bench co-engineered with Daher and built by Cetim specifically for the program.

“The part was fixed at its foot or base and also on the side to represent the spars in a wing,” says Denize. “It was fixed on the top edges as well, while actuators at 90° and 45° introduced compression and shearing in the rib. Numerous sensors were placed on the part, including strain gauges and acoustic emission sensors, plus a camera to perform stereo correlation [digital image correlation], which will enable us to eventually replace some of the sensors with a camera. We are using all of this data to analyze the breakage in the part and compare the results with our stress modeling.”

 

Analysis of the tested rib — including nondestructive testing (NDT) before and after loading (top) — confirmed cohesive rupture at the welded surfaces (bottom) where an acoustic emission signal was detected at ultimate load.

This analysis is ongoing, says Bailly. “Our team was able to isolate and separate the small welded area  (about 250 square millimeters) where an acoustic signal was detected at ultimate load. Analysis of the surfaces here confirm that the rupture was cohesive — as in coupon-level testing — and was located in the area with the highest theoretical load. This result is very promising for the IR welding technology, and we will provide more details and discussion in our presentation at ITHEC 2026.”

For now, only static tests for the full rib have been performed. “But we will also have to do some fatigue testing,” says Denize. “We are currently doing this type of testing at the sample level on welded coupons made using the test setup of KVE Composites, a Daher subsidiary specialized in advanced TPC technologies. We then subject those to cyclic loading. Eventually, this will also be needed for a full-scale welded rib.”

“We have also been working with the authorities to see how we can certify this design,” says Bailly. The thick TPC rib program was aligned with European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) CS-25 certification requirements for large turbine-powered aircraft. “The test pyramids we’ve completed in this program and this full part mechanical testing are the first steps. However, if we had to certify this part today, we would still be required to add chicken rivets. So, we are working to see what is the actual amount of rivets that we would have to add. So far, we’ve determined it’s only around 10, so that’s not a big weight and cost impact. But we are still working on it. We also want to build as much design and process intelligence as possible for the next generation of short- to medium-range aircraft.”

Further optimization, functionalization

With the full-scale rib testing now complete, the project is in its final phase, comprising analysis of the test results and correlation to the modeling, says Denize. “We will then compile a final technical analysis as well as an economic analysis of what it costs to produce the part. We’ve already shown a 25% reduction in production time compared to traditional consolidation using oven or autoclave and assembly using bolts or rivets. This innovative design and its process technologies also require less energy.”

“The actual cycle time depends on a lot of different factors,” says Bailly, “including installation of the part in the press, heating, cooling and demolding. So far, we have used a prototype setup for R&D, but we are now looking at how to automate and accelerate some of these phases for industrialization. Still, if you look at the speed Direct Stamping offers and compare what we’ve demonstrated in the welded rib to the multiple steps required for fasteners — drilling holes, cleaning them, inspection, applying sealant, installing fasteners and verifying position, etc. — our approach offers significant time and cost savings.”

Daher has already demonstrated recycling, converting scrap from its production of TPC bracket and clips into pellets containing 56% carbon which are then used for overmolding and injection molding, such as this brake pedal which replaces aluminum for its TBM turboprop aircraft.

“But we are improving the large thick rib design even further,” says Denize, “including overmolding using recycled materials from TPC clips and bracket production. This is part of our broader strategy for TPC parts, which includes not only zero-waste solutions in production but also recycling end-of-life parts.”

“Our first step is with a smaller, stamped thick rib,” adds Bailly, “which opens new possibilities for optimization because the overmolding enables different functionalizations.”

“This large thick rib we have achieved represents a significant step forward,” says Denize. “It helps to enable the innovative wing architectures necessary for NGSA and speeds wing assembly thanks to its simple design. Daher’s ability to produce very thick-walled parts could also help to reduce the quantities of wing components necessary for future aircraft.”

“We have always been a strong partner for OEMs,” says Bailly, “and have continued to invest in technology and production readiness for the parts required in future empennage, fuselage, wing and movables.” He notes Daher is developing a production plant digital twin for thick and large TPC parts for future large commercial aircraft and amassing a foundation for certification. “We are also advancing fast-cure TS, machining and inspection — the technologies needed for high-rate aircraft production now and in the future.”

Mikrosam Libra AFP system Installed at USC’s McNAIR Center. Source | McNAIR Center

The McNAIR Center for Aerospace Innovation and Research at the University of South Carolina’s Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing has announced the installation and immediate availability of a Mikrosam (Prilep, North Macedonia) Libra Multifunctional Robotic System at its 42,000-square-foot advanced manufacturing facility in Columbia, South Carolina. Procurement of this equipment was made possible through Office of the Secretary of War Manufacturing Technology Program funding with program management support provided by Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane.

The McNAIR Center serves as a multidisciplinary hub for advanced engineering and manufacturing, supporting aerospace, mechanical, electrical, chemical, industrial and biomedical engineering initiatives. The facility enables service work, applied research, technology demonstrations and workforce development in partnership with industry and government stakeholders.

In collaboration with Composite Automation (Cape Coral, Fla., U.S.) and Mikrosam, the McNAIR Center has installed an 8-tow, ¼-inch automated fiber placement (AFP) head equipped with laser and infrared (IR) heating, integrated onto a KUKA (Augsburg, Germany) Titan L750 robot mounted on a 10.6-meter linear rail. The system includes 1.2 × 1.2-meter flat oil-heated tooling, as well as headstock and tailstock configurations capable of accommodating tooling up to 4.3 meters in length and 1.8 meters in diameter.

Adapatability, flexibility, data and digital control

The Mikrosam system features an AFP head, advanced controls and large-format capability, but its defining characteristic is adaptability: any end effector can be mounted and controlled from the platform, enabling the McNAIR Center and its partners to apply the software and machine to other, novel applications. In addition to AFP heads, the system can integrate mixed-supplier or in-house-developed end effectors for applications such as thermoplastic welding, automated inspection and other advanced manufacturing processes, supporting highly versatile robotic composites manufacturing.

The system during factory acceptance test at Mikrosam. Source | Mikrosam 

At the core of this capability is Mikrosam’s multi-material AFP head, which enables precise placement of multiple slit tapes with individual tow control, including on-the-fly cutting, restarting and steering, allowing accurate fiber deposition across complex geometries while maintaining consistent material handling and placement quality. The system is fully capable of processing high-temperature thermoplastics and is equally mature for thermoset materials and dry fiber preforms; McNAIR is also interested in using the equipment to test novel material systems not yet used with AFP. Processing thermoset, thermoplastic and dry fiber materials on a single platform offers advantages for both research and industrial environments, enabling rapid material qualification, process development and transition to scalable manufacturing.

“Our AFP systems are designed to process multiple material systems on a single platform while maintaining precise control over critical parameters such as temperature, compaction and fiber placement,” emphasizes Samoil Samak, general director at Mikrosam. “The integration of closed-loop thermal control and high-power laser heating allows users to explore thermoplastic processing at a level of consistency and repeatability that is essential for industrial adoption.”

Like all composites manufacturing systems at the McNAIR Center, the Mikrosam AFP platform is fully integrated with comprehensive data acquisition and power monitoring systems. Through Mikrosam’s control and software ecosystem, it enables continuous monitoring and recording of key process parameters — including temperature, compaction pressure, layup speed and material use — ensuring full traceability and process transparency. These tools support real-time evaluation of processing parameters and energy inputs, providing immediate feedback on how layup conditions influence deposition quality, placement rates and final part performance, supporting both research validation and production-scale process optimization.

McNAIR expects the AFP and integrated robotic system to play a critical role in next-generation advanced manufacturing initiatives, particularly in high-rate thermoplastic composite (TPC) production and large-scale structural applications. The Mikrosam system’s modular and multi-process design significantly expands its application potential across multiple industries.

Additionally, the Roctool (Le Bourget-du-Lac, France) induction-heated platens — installed at McNAIR earlier in 2026 — can be used as 762 × 1016-millimeter heated tooling for out-of-autoclave (OOA) consolidation and integrated AFP laydown processes, further strengthening the Center’s ability to support rapid manufacturing workflows and advanced thermoplastic processing strategies.

Industry collaboration and access

The McNAIR Center is making the Mikrosam Libra AFP System available to industry and government partners for:

• Workforce development and hands-on training.
• Contract manufacturing and technical services.
• Applied research and development.
• Secure research and development projects.
• Process demonstration and validation.
• Advanced manufacturing scale-up initiatives.

Providing availability to adaptable robotic systems with advanced AFP capability, multi-material processing, closed-loop thermal control, modular tooling flexibility and integrated data monitoring, continues to expand the McNAIR Center’s role as a national resource for advanced composite and aerospace manufacturing innovation.

“Advanced composites manufacturing is entering a phase where flexibility and process integration are becoming just as important as performance,” adds Samak. “With this system, the McNAIR Center now has a platform that enables collaboration between academia, industry and government, accelerating the transition from research to real-world manufacturing.”

Industry and government partners interested in using the Mikrosam AFP system for service, research, development or workforce training are encouraged to contact the McNAIR Center for Aerospace Innovation and Research at the University of South Carolina.

Associate Professor Pavana Prabhakar’s lab group used a loom to weave a metal “yarn” into a carbon fiber fabric. The resulting material can drape over airframes and better disperse the electric charge of a lightning strike than standard carbon fiber-reinforced polymer composite materials. Source | University of Madison-Wisconsin

A University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering team has developed a hybrid fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite “blanket” designed to reduce lightning strike damage and improve protective coverage on aircraft and other high-flying vehicles. The research was published in the June 2026 issue of Composites, Part B: Engineering.

The material, developed by a team led by Pavana Prabhakar — the Charles G. Salman associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and mechanical engineering — integrates stainless steel yarn into carbon fiber fabric to create a path for dissipating electrical charge away from a lightning strike site. “These composites are not very good at conducting electricity,” Prabhakar says. “When lightning strikes these surfaces, it can cause quite a bit of damage because excessive heat builds up from poor electrical dissipation.”

Conventional expanded metallic foil lightning protection systems can delaminate on impact, further damaging the fuselage, and struggle to conform to the complex shapes common on emerging advanced air mobility (AAM) vehicles such as air taxis. Prabhakar’s team’s alternative is a drapable fabric — similar to a t-shirt or jacket — made of two metal-infused woven layers laid perpendicular to each other as sacrificial layers near a structure’s surface. That bidirectional layout spreads the electrical charge across the material’s outer surface, functioning like a fabric-based Faraday cage and reducing heat concentration at the strike point.

Testing showed the hybrid design lost just 0.03% weight in one simulated lightning strike test case, versus up to 3% weight loss without hybridization, a reduction of several orders of magnitude. Post-strike bending tests showed the material retained structural integrity. Prabhakar adds that the layer could be built into new aircraft structures or bonded onto existing aircraft for retrofits and repairs.

Next steps include testing copper yarn, which are more conductive than stainless steel, evaluating long-term durability and galvanic corrosion susceptibility, and investigating metal-coated carbon fibers.

The project originated as a 2023-24 senior design project under Ph.D. graduate Hridyesh Tewani, the paper’s lead author; former students Vincent Scheere, Madison Owens, Emilio Cumbajin and Camila De Leon are listed as co-authors.

The Highly Loaded Thermoplastic Wing Rib demonstrator hasn’t emerged in isolation. Rather, it is a direct product of the R&D infrastructure Daher (Nantes, France) built specifically for this kind of work.

Together with Victrex, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), Cetim, AniForm and the DGAC (French Civil Aviation Authority), the Daher wing rib is 64 plies thick — 12 millimeters — and made from carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastics, assembled from two L-shaped components welded into a T-shape.

Two processes make this possible:

• Direct stamping (Daher-patented) eliminates the consolidation step between layup and stamping, cutting cycle time and cost.
• Infrared welding (LIST-patented) joins the two halves without a single rivet.

When compared to aluminum, bolted assemblies, the TPC wing rib is 22% lighter, with 15% lower assembly cost, a 25% shorter production cycle and fully recyclable. The project earned a 2026 JEC Innovation Award.

The rib, along with its direct stamping and infrared welding processes, was developed out of Daher’s Shap’in TechCenter in Saint-Aignan-de-Grandlieu, France, a facility the company opened in December 2022 to co-locate its design, materials and manufacturing teams alongside its composites production plant next door. As Daher intellectual property manager Michael Hugon explained during a CW plant tour of the facility in 2023, the goal was to create “an excellence center to develop the innovative composite technologies that will make tomorrow’s eco-efficient products possible.”

Source | Web Industries

Precision converting and advanced material solutions provider Web Industries (Marlborough, Mass., U.S.) has plans to expand its Denton, Texas, facility footprint by 20%. New cutting and advanced sewing capabilities will support the increasing demand Web has seen in space launch and satellite manufacturing markets.

The Denton facility has historically supported commercial aerospace composites work — including components for engine nacelles and guide vanes — but has increasingly become the company’s center of excellence for space launch and satellite manufacturing. “Space is now over 25% of our aerospace business, and we believe it’s growing faster than commercial aerospace,” says Ben Winters, business development manager at Web Industries. “I don’t know if I can say we’re on every space launch, but I think we’re on about half of the launches globally in the last year.”

The enhanced facility will further strengthen Web Industries' ability to deliver precision multi-layer insulation (MLI), thermal protection systems (TPS) and complex soft goods assemblies used in launch vehicles, satellites and advanced aerospace applications. Web has delivered more than 75,000 MLI systems for space applications to date.

New capacities will include:

• Advanced cutting technologies for high-performance films, fabrics and composites materials
• Expanded sewing and assembly capabilities for complex, multi-layer soft goods.
• Enhanced throughput to support high-rate production programs and mission-critical builds.

“Part of the reason soft goods are used [in space] is that they’re more conformable and allow for design changes later in the cycle,” explains Michael Quarrey, VP corporate development, Web Industries. “ It can be weeks rather than months from design to installation on the satellite or spacecraft.” 

Web notes that it does also performs composites formatting work for space launch customers beyond soft goods, supplying materials used in components like launch vehicle tanks, fuselage structures and payload fairings.

The company also plans to add new manufacturing roles to the Denton facility, which will increase the production team by ~25%.

“This expansion positions Web Industries to meet the evolving needs of the space market,” says John Madej, president and CEO. “Our customers are building more satellites at higher rates than ever before, and they need partners who can deliver precision, repeatability and scale.”

The expansion is expected to be completed by the end of 2026, with production ramping shortly thereafter.

Also read “Web Industries expands thermoset slitting capacity in France.”