Composite materials offer great performance advantages to many products in our world today. One of the factors limiting wider use of composites is the overall cost of fabrication. The raw materials are generally higher in cost than most competing materials, and fabrication labor adds to the cost of finished parts. ATK Aerospace Structures (ATK), as well as several other companies, has been involved in developing lower cost manufacturing technologies for complex composite products. Over the last 40 years, the company has developed a unique set of composite automation technologies targeted at reducing costs, improving part quality and consistency and expanding the use of automation into more composite structures. This article discusses two current automation technologies in use on our production and development products.
展开▼
