On May 2, Swiss additive manufacturing company 9T Labs and high-performance polymer supplier Arkema announced that the two parties have cooperated to achieve the mass production of composite structural small parts with complex internal fiber orientation, and have certain low-cost competition force. According to 9T Labs, the method combines Arkema ’s high-performance Kepstan 7000 PEKK thermoplastic carbon fiber composite with 9T Labs`recently launched Red series of additive manufacturing solutions.
Although fiber-reinforced composite materials have a high utilization rate in the fuselage and wings of new aircraft such as the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787, the aerospace industry still highly relies on metals to manufacture smaller and thicker internal structures, such as Connect the bracket, hinge and support structure.
Fiber-reinforced composite materials are ideal substitutes for metal materials, which can significantly reduce the weight of parts and ultimately produce the required shape. However, traditional composite manufacturing technology cannot produce products with complex structures and high cost performance, so it is difficult to replace small metal components. First choice.
9T Labs and Arkema recently produced a helicopter door hinge part to demonstrate the potential of the new process to replace metal in aerospace parts. The production process uses the design and simulation software Fibrify developed by 9T Labs, which integrates the finite element analysis (FEA) solution, with a true 3D view of the internal fiber direction and the optimization of the layering function, and then uses the patent of 9T Labs-increased Material melting technology (AFT) manufacturing. The results show that compared with metal parts, the weight of the optimized fiber-reinforced composite parts is reduced by more than 80%. In addition, based on the cost of parts, the cost of mass production of 1000 parts can be reduced by 22%, proving the high cost performance of the Red series solutions in mass production.
9T Labs is a spin-off of the ETH Zurich. Founded in 2018 by Chester Houwink, Giovanni Cavolina and Martin Eichenhofer, the company ’s mission is to make “carbon fiber composite materials as easy as ordinary metal materials available through 3D printing. ".