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The Future of Material Design: Metal vs. Composites

There has been a lot of enthusiasm about composites in aerospace and some disappointment too. In jet programs, composites were used for several decades, but they design, treat, and post-process composites the same way as metals. The reason is that by nature, the design for composites is extremely complicated. There is not so much theory behind simulating or estimating the behavior of composites, so the same simple methods – for metals – are applied to composites.

Fiber reinforced composites are directional by nature, and this is the biggest difference to metals, they are anisotropic, while the metals are omnidirectional, and all the design methods were created for isotropic materials.

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Blog Technology

6-AXIS 3D PRINTER: HOW TO MANUFACTURE NON-PLANAR CONTINUOUS FIBER REINFORCED COMPOSITES

3D printing is referred to as such because it allows to produce 3 dimensional objects; however, the printing process itself is actually more like 2.5D. What does it mean? The conventional additive manufacturing process consists in laying material on top of each other on a horizontal plane, meaning that the printing head and the nozzle move only in a planar coordinate system building layers for creating a three-dimensional object.

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Cases

HVAC spare parts on demand: engine cases and air blade holders

Most of the time 3D printed composites are considered as competitors to metals. It’s time to bust some myths, because for certain cases composite 3D printing with continuous fibers is the only option available. Here is an example of using anisoprinting for HVAC systems with three spare parts in air conducts of large industrial facilities.