I talked to a guy who recently started work for an aircraft maker. They are full production fuselage shop… they make wings too.
guess how they are making them all? wet lay up, vacuum bagging, then shove it into a huge oven to cure.
They don’t even use RTM or VARTM. no prepregs either and no autoclave. http://www.epicaircraft.com/
Look at the fit of the windshield. No thanks.
LOL. I don’t know what their tooling looks like. There is one photo of their shop floor on their website. That windshield does look like poo poo.
A lot of companies are scared of the distinct, “success or failure” of infusion , its a lot safer to just vacuum bag and not let a minuscule leak ruin a huge stack of valuable materials
Yes that’s very true, and we’ve all been down that road:(
aerospace manufacturers must follow very strict guidelines. even one leak in a bag for a structural part such as a wing would need to be chucked. The more higher the air content in a part the weaker the part is. also wet layup can produce very nice parts if done right, most importantly controlling the appropriate amount of RC for the application, and with the use of an oven you can have some very tough resin system available equal to that of prepreg. though prepreg is far more superior to wet layup for many reasons
Yup. Ive got a copy of Boeings wet layup and pre-preg layup guidlines. The layup is the simple part. The materials your allowed to use is the confusing part.
yep, they use a data aquistion program to monitor the entire bagging/curing process. and if any part lightly hits the ground it also must be chucked.