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Continuous Fiber 3D Printing Used for USAF Aircraft Wing Structure https://ift.tt/3wRCASe Idaho-based company Continuous Composites owns the earliest granted patents on Continuous Fiber 3D Printing, or CF3D, which can reduce manufacturing lead time and manual labor and enable the production of complex geometries. The company just announced that its CF3D technology was used to complete a two-year Wing Structure Design for Manufacturing (WiSDM) contract for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) through Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT). The project, with an end goal of manufacturing a Low Cost Attritable Aircraft (LCAA) wing, was extremely successful, as Continuous Composites reports that the carbon fiber 3D printed wing spars demonstrated a structural performance to “160% design limit load.”
The focus of the WiSDM contract and LCAA project was to majorly decrease the lead time and cost of building attritable airframe structures, by using a new structural design framework and corresponding manufacturing and materials; that’s why CF3D was chosen to print the wing assembly’s structural carbon fiber spars. However, several other manufacturing technologies were also used during the program, including:
Continuous Composites’ CF3D technology was used to print two carbon fiber tapered C-channel spars, each weighing four pounds and measuring eight feet long.
CF3D is, according to Continuous Composites, a “novel approach to composites manufacturing,” and is a fully automated, configurable process. A continuous dry fiber is impregnated in situ with a snap-curing, thermosetting resin delivered by an end effector, which is moved by a software-driven motion platform; to allow for variable part thickness and ply drops in the resulting structure, cutting and feeding are also used. Parts are precisely printed, and optimized for high performance with the continuous fibers, which then leads to the cost and lead time savings.
The final wing assembly delivered to the United States Air Force, where it was statistically load tested. The fully assembled wing gave a stellar performance: before the compression skin buckled, it achieved 160% design limit load (DLL). The 3D printed spars held, with no measured or visual damage, which demonstrated the component’s structural performance. Finally, the CF3D-fabricated carbon fiber spars were able to achieve a 60% fiber volume fraction with approximately 1% to 2% voids. Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com April 9, 2021 at 07:36AM
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