A snippet of the CompositesWorld article The democratization of composites is reconfiguring supply chains – from their latest digital publication, in which TRB is featured –
“CW received a press release in April titled, “TRB Lightweight Structures manufactures prepreg material to streamline part production.” Bringing materials manufacture in-house isn’t new. I remember touring Diamond Aircraft’s (Wiener Neustadt, Austria) composite aircraft manufacturing facility in London, Ontario, Canada, in the 1990s and seeing European resin impregnation machines that allowed the company to produce its own “wet” prepreg materials on-demand, which were immediately used to build aircraft structures using hand layup. e goal was to control materials production and quality to enable the production flexibility and cost control needed by the small aircraft manufacturer. What is different now is that, thanks to new robotic and digital technologies, everything from fiber placement to computed tomography (CT) to injection molding is being automated in increasingly smaller equipment that is more flexible and cost-effective.
To read the full article click here