USCAR's Composite Consortium to Unveil Breakthrough Manufacturing Process
30 September 1998
USCAR's Composite Consortium to Unveil Breakthrough Manufacturing Process KETTERING (DAYTON), Ohio -- Leaders representing state and local government, as well as the auto and aerospace industries, will get a sneak peek at 10 a.m. Friday, September 25, at a potentially breakthrough composites manufacturing technique for the 21st century that may lead to cheaper and quicker composite structures for the auto industry.At the National Composite Center (NCC) near Dayton, Ohio, researchers from the United States Council for Automotive Research's (USCAR) Automotive Composites Consortium (ACC) will unveil a new technology that demonstrates the manufacturing capability of large structural composites. This first public demonstration of the ACC's new technology is taking place as part of the NCC's dedication of their newly opened facility in Kettering, Ohio, which was established with support from the State of Ohio.
Automakers have dreamed about affordable structural composites for decades. Composites are light and can be formed into complex shapes that can do the same job as many welded metal stampings. Until recently though, composites' high cost and long manufacturing cycle times have limited the expectations for structural composite use in the auto industry.
The new process is raising expectations. Called P4 (programmable powder preform process), it involves choppers mounted on robots that spray short strands of glass fiber onto a screen to make a preformed shape. Once the fiberglass "preform" is made, it is lifted out and placed in a mold where the preform is injected with a liquid resin that solidifies to make a completed composite part. More technical details will be announced on next Tuesday at the 13th Annual Advanced Composites Conference & Exposition in Detroit, where ACC members Norman Chavka and Jeff Dahl will deliver a paper on the P4 process.
The ACC's P4 development work is part of a larger program aimed at lowering the cost and increasing the manufacturing rate of composites made by the liquid molding process. The ACC and its suppliers are demonstrating this improved technology by making composite pickup truck boxes. Funding for this ambitious project is split equally between USCAR and the Federal Government. Both the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provided support for this effort.
The ACC's manufacturing cell is the first full-scale, automated demonstration of the process. The P4 machine located at the NCC is the culmination of three years and $4 million of work by the ACC, Textron Automotive, Aplicator System A.B., and the U.S. Department of Energy.
The possibility of a more affordable, highly automated composite manufacturing process caught the attention of the U.S. Air Force last year. The Air Force Research Laboratory's Materials and Manufacturing Directorate awarded a $7.24 million contract to the NCC to adapt and develop the P4 process for aerospace applications.
USCAR is the umbrella organization for cooperative, pre-competitive research. Its members are Chrysler, Ford and General Motors. Other USCAR programs include such pre-competitive projects as vehicle recycling, vehicle emissions, advanced occupant restraint systems, foundry emissions and advanced technologies for highly fuel efficient vehicles.
