Regardless of whether a composites company specializes in aerospace, industrial, or even motor sports composites, automation is becoming increasingly important to meeting customer demands. In fact, automation has emerged as one of the most important contributors to more efficient composite manufacturing. Its contributions to our industry are only going to grow as time goes on.
One could make the case that the aerospace industry is undergoing a major transformation as it seeks to drive automated composite manufacturing. But it’s not just aerospace. Automation is good across the entire composite spectrum because it addresses scalability, cost, quality, and efficiency.
The physical processes behind composite fabrication have remained largely unchanged for decades. But the standard ways of doing things are not necessarily good when an aerospace company is trying to optimize manufacturing high-performance aircraft parts quickly and efficiently. This effectively means that current processes demand automation.
Here are five examples of what the composites industry is already working on:
Automation within the composites industry is no longer in its infancy. But it is also far from mature. There are still plenty of things that need to be worked out before automation is ready for prime time.
The fundamental challenges in automating composite manufacturing are fragmentation and integration. On the fragmentation front, the industry is looking at a variety of sub-processes that still rely heavily on manual intervention. While we’ve learned how to automate core processes, it is the sub-processes that are proving more problematic.
In terms of integration, end-to-end integration is the ultimate goal. But achieving seamless automation requires the adoption of new technologies that many companies still find out of reach. With greater adoption will come better integration.
Automation challenges are worth overcoming because of the opportunities success offers. Consider quality and consistency. A combination of automated manufacturing processes and inspection ultimately lead to superior consistency across the entire manufacturing landscape. Consistency is crucial to product quality. Automation offers the possibility of improving both by reducing human error and variability.
Scalability is yet another opportunity waiting to be seized. Traditionally, fabricating with composites has been limited to small-batch and nest production lines due to the inherent difficulties associated with layups. Scalability is possible with automation because automation opens the door to mass production. In the aerospace industry, mass production is crucial to keeping costs in check.
All sorts of industries are adopting automation at varying rates. It’s a slow go in composites manufacturing because of the nature of our business. But we are implementing automation as quickly as we can. With increased automation comes better quality, improved production, increased efficiency, and the ability to push composites to new heights.
