One of the arguments against moving parts from autoclave curing to out-of-autodave (OOA) curing is that energy consumption is a small portion of total costs, perhaps only 5 percent. The implication is that the requalifica-tion costs for an existing part well exceed the potential savings in reduced energy costs and the benefits of lean processing vs. batch autoclave curing. But if the volumes are high enough, and if one can reduce energy consumption by 50 percent or more, this adds up to 2.5 percent of sales to the bottom line.
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