IMTS 2026 saw the Additive Sector relocate from the West Building to the South, neighboring the Metal Removal Sector.Source: Additive Manufacturing Media (All Images)

The editors of Additive Manufacturing Media were onsite for IMTS – The International Manufacturing Technology Show, held every two years at McCormick Place in Chicago. IMTS is not an AM-specific event, but that’s part of what makes it valuable to attend: the chance to see and talk about additive manufacturing in a context that also contains adjacent processes like CNC machining, inspection and parts cleaning, and advanced technologies evolving in parallel such as artificial intelligence and robotics.

Of course, there was still plenty to talk about specific to AM.

What follows are six of the clearest trends we saw, plus one challenge we think could be  resolved by the time the show rolls around again.

More Suppliers Making Parts

One of the strongest trends to emerge at this year’s IMTS might have been that of equipment OEMs more deliberately jumping into part production.

This electromagnetic shielding component for a drone demonstrates the ability to layer copper and stainless steel with MPA, a process which Hermle operates in-house. 

Some 3D printing technology developers have always been operators of that equipment; Hermle, for example, showcased parts produced with Metal Powder Application (MPA), a hybrid manufacturing process it offers as a service. The technique is capable of multi-material parts including graded transitions and material layering, used in applications such as injection mold tooling, electromagnetic shielding and satellite components. The complexity of producing these parts, and the complex problems they are meant to solve, has created the demand to provide MPA as a service.

But even more ubiquitous processes such as laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) carry risk and development time that some OEMs are choosing to take on for their customers. Sid Raje, director of sales and business development at Velo3D, spoke about the company’s newly opened Livermore facility which manufactures both its printers and customer parts using these machines.

“It’s about meeting the customer where they are,” he says, pointing out that not every manufacturer has the space, people or desire to add a 3D printer to their facility. Providing production as a service is therefore not competitive against existing customers from Velo3D’s point of view, but a way to grow the overall AM market by easing more customers into it. By contracting production with Velo3D (or through the company’s network of users), those customers can explore additive manufacturing with a lower investment, and on a faster timeline.

“The machine OEM has the most levers to pull,” when it comes to process development, Raje says, therefore working through Velo3D’s contracting arm is most likely the shortest route to production for many.

Also on the LPBF side, Gregory Hayes, senior vice president of global at EOS Additive Minds, spoke about how the machine manufacturer is engaging in more turnkey projects to help customers “de-risk the path to production.” The company has a history of assisting with proof-of-concept and proof-of-process development, but is now extending that into “proof-of-production” services as well. EOS’s Texas facility now supports initial and bridge production for select customer programs — but, importantly, is not interested in becoming a large-scale contract manufacturer.

“There’s always an exit plan,” Hayes says, which might see EOS handing over production to the customer or another contractor at the end of 8 to 18 months.

Derisking additive manufacturing with production services is playing out for other technologies, as well. Directed energy deposition (DED) equipment supplier Formalloy has recently moved into a new facility combining machine construction and part production services for customers. CEO Melanie Lang says that the company is still primarily a printer OEM, but has seen increased demand for services especially on new programs.

“Customers want us to do the initial qualification,” Lang says, which speeds development but often results in a hand-off to the customer facility for scale manufacturing.  

Formalloy’s powder-fed DED process enables multimaterial printing; on the software side the company is working on tools to help engineers design parts with functionally graded materials (FGMs) like this blisk, which transitions between stainless steel 316L and Inconel 625. 

Technology Advances Get Users Printing Faster

Even as machine builders begin to take on more development and production work, many are also investing in simplifying the initial setup, calibration and programming of their machines with user experience in mind.

EOS, for example, has introduced the ability to perform a powderless acceptance test on its LPBF systems. The test enables checking a new printer’s scanners and lasers upon delivery without any material in the machine, skipping over material handling steps and preventing any powder from being wasted.

To simplify ongoing machine calibration, Renishaw highlighted its Optical System Verification (OSV) solution, introduced several years ago to enable customers to perform regular checks of the equipment. Users of its RenAM 500 series place a plate with 169 hemispheres (arranged in a 13 by 13 grid) on the machine’s heater plate, run a program within the RenAM software, and calibrate the system’s lasers in a matter of about 20 minutes.

The sphere array is used to test the positional accuracy of the machine’s lasers across the powder bed, offered as part of Renishaw’s OSV kit. 

On the software side, build preparation and slicing are also becoming easier to use. User friendliness was a primary consideration for the software that drives HP’s MJF 1200, says Arvind Rangarajan, global head of product and strategy at HP Additive Manufacturing Solutions. Developed with Materialise, Magics Print for HP offers a guided workflow designed to help users get to parts with the minimal number of clicks, recognizing that this smaller machine, shipping in 2027 and already deployed at some early users, is likely to land in offices, design studios and other less industrial settings.

Arvind Rangarajan, global head of product and strategy at HP Additive Manufacturing Solutions, shows a build demonstrating the full volume of the 12-liter MJF 1200 3D printer. Anticipating use by less experienced users and in non-industrial settings, HP has made efforts to streamline the user experience from slicing through depowdering of parts on this platform. 

For manufacturers operating multiple machines potentially from different builders, there are advances here too. Thomas Pomorski of propulsion company Ursa Major shared during the AM+ Workshop: Aerospace and Defense the work that his company has done alongside Dyndrite to develop a slicer that can adapt a design to the machine that will make it, similar to a G-code postprocessor for CNC machining.

“We call it Polaris,” Pomorski shares. “It’s a Python library wrapping the Dyndrite geometry toolpath engine to generate toolpath files for EOS, SLM, Velo3D, Aconity,” and other LPBF systems.

Robots Getting More Flexible

Many large format additive manufacturing (LFAM) OEMs have relied on robots to provide the motion for these printers for the increased flexibility and process control possible. At IMTS 2026, AM solutions providers like Caracol and Rapid Fusion showcased a variety of extrusion heads, as well as a modular, customizable system — resulting in even more adaptable and customizable robotic LFAM solutions.

Caracol’s HV extrusion head is attached to a Kuka robotic cell, powered by the Heron AM system for fast, large-format production. 

Since its inception, Caracol has been leveraging robotics to support its LFAM operations. At the show, the company exhibited its Heron AM LFAM platform for thermoplastic pellet extrusion using a Kuka six-axis robotic arm. The platform's customizable automation and control suite enables operators to tailor their AM processes to individual applications, while the robotic arm eliminates scale and shape limits. Heron AM enables automatic material feedstock, anti-collision surveillance and layer cooling, as well as control of temperature, melt flow, extrusion speed and more.

“Robotics can give clients the flexibility to play around and be creative,” says Violetta Nespolo, chief marketing and strategy officer at Caracol AM.

Now, Caracol offers a variety of high-performance extrusion heads specifically for 3D printing. Like the Heron AM platform, these extrusion heads can be incorporated into any existing robotic cell. Caracol displayed its high versatility (HV) extrusion head at the show, designed to produce end-use parts for industries like maritime and aerospace, architectural structures and more. The HV extrusion head nozzle can extend from 2 to 8 mm, targeting fine details and high throughput.

Similarly, Rapid Fusion highlighted its robotic LFAM systems — like the Apollo, a fully customizable AM system capable of high-speed pellet extrusion, travel of up to 30 feet and providing precise robotic control for operators. The Apollo is a modular system, meaning it can be upgraded with the company’s milling and CNC systems based on a company’s individual needs.

Additionally, the Rapid Fusion PE320 pellet extruder can be attached to any existing CNC machine or robotic cell. This extruder is capable of precise temperature control, which is optimal when handling high-temperature or abrasive materials like carbon fiber.

Drones Continue Taking Off

The Emerging Technology Center included this Drone Fly Zone where drones produced in the adjacent cell were put to the test. 

The unmissable additive manufacturing application on the show floor was drone manufacturing, which has now moved from product development to rapid, high-scale production. The Emerging Technology Center just off the main concourse placed drone manufacturing front-and-center, with a demonstration that combined additive manufacturing with machining and robotics. The cell featured a wall of Prusa 3D printers producing polymer shells that were placed into machined molds, filled with foam pellets and electronics, and heated to form a lightweight drone body. The cell produced (and flew) one drone approximately every 4 minutes, a proxy for the production scale this application is quickly reaching often with AM as an enabling technology.

“With drones, we thought in a few years once they scale, they’re going to move out of MJF [Multi Jet Fusion],” says HP’s Rangarajan. Instead, it has become an area of growth, with MJF delivering bodies, wings and other components of drones used across wildlife surveillance, agricultural and military applications.

Drones for military applications, agriculture and wildlife surveillance (like the one on display in HP’s booth) are continuing to scale with 3D printing for the technology’s flexibility in design and production location. 

“There are so many design advantages that it provides as well as this robust, scalable supply chain,” Rangarajan says, citing HP’s Additive Manufacturing Network of designated manufacturing partners, which drone OEMs and others can leverage for outsourced production. “[Customers] want to have surge capacity. This technology naturally lends itself to it.”

HP has seen drone part production within both the polymer MJF segment of its business and the Metal Jet binder jetting segment, with the latter technology being used to produce components of drone engines.

Other 3D printable materials have become important to the drone supply chain as well. AM parts and equipment provider Impossible Objects is leveraging its CBAM (composite-based additive manufacturing) 25 printer to manufacture drones from composite materials such as carbon fiber PEEK, which were displayed at IMTS 2026.

Designed to be similar to high-speed lithography, the CBAM process begins with loading a roll of composite material into the 3D printer, which is then flattened into sheets. Then, the specific patterns for each layer of the final part are printed onto the sheet using inkjet technology. Polymer powder is then uniformly applied to the sheet; the powder only adheres to the printed image of the part and excess powder is removed. This process then repeats layer by layer, sheet by sheet, until each sheet is ultimately stacked together, heated until the point of melting and molded to the intended height. After an automated media blasting process, the final part is ready.

Designed to scale industrial AM at high speeds, CBAM can print up to 25 layers per minute. The process can produce composite parts with strength up to 200 MPa, while eliminating high tooling costs typically associated with CNC machining and injection molding.

Impossible Objects has now taken five CBAM orders, deploying its solutions for aerospace, defense and advanced manufacturing applications.

Beyond materials, suppliers are also working to solve challenges with drone design. Speaking at the AM+ Workshop: Aerospace and Defense workshop on Tuesday, September 15, Adam Smith of InfinitForm described a product the company is working on to speed wing design for fixed-wing drones.

Adam Smith of InfinitForm spoke at Tuesday’s AM+ Workshop: Aerospace and Defense, previewing a tool in development that will make fixed drone wings faster and easier to design. 

“The Drone Dominance Program is pushing people to rapidly innovate,” Smith says. “We see a huge need for the ability to design prismatic rib structure of drones.”

InfinitForm’s physical AI design platform, which can generate designs optimized for both performance and multiple manufacturing processes at once, is well-suited to this challenge; functionality in work will enable users to define requirements and generate an application-optimized design of a drone wing in BREP ready for the printer within minutes.

OEMs Highlight Made in the U.S.A. Efforts

With global supply chain tensions and U.S. government mandates against Chinese-built 3D printers, it wasn’t surprising to hear multiple AM machine builders discuss their own equipment supply chains, whether U.S.-based or not.

Italian LFAM machine builder Caracol opened the doors to its Pflugerville, Texas, facility in September of 2025, offering system integration, technology manufacturing, application development and support to U.S. customers. By localizing its operations in Texas, Caracol has been able to serve U.S. customers while reducing the high costs and emissions associated with shipping from Europe.

Similarly, EOS, headquartered in Germany, stood up production for its M290 and M400-4 metal laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) machines in Texas last year as well. Hayes says the company is on track to meet its target of manufacturing 48 machines in the U.S. this year, and plans to scale its machine-building capacity. Subassemblies are the same as those used in EOS’s factory in Germany so international shipping is still a consideration, but the increased rate of printer production has enabled the company to command better prices for these components amongst its suppliers.

Xact Metal highlighted parts from its XM200G µHD laser powder bed fusion machine, which uses smaller powders in the range of 5 to 15 microns diameter to deliver smoother surface finishes. Originally intended for mold tooling, the U.S.-built machine is finding uses now in electronics, jewelry and medical applications. 

Other equipment manufacturers that were founded in the U.S. pointed to localized product manufacturing as a benefit they’re able to leverage. Xact Metal builds each of its machines custom in State College, Pennsylvania, mostly from locally produced subassemblies. That local supply chain plus strategically stocking up on parts has helped the company maintain lead times of just 2 to 3 months for a fully new machine.

On the printer manufacturing side of Velo3D’s business, long-held internal sourcing policies are bringing an advantage in winning production AM work.

Matt Karesh of Velo3D next to a conceptual marine propeller printed on the company’s LPBF machines. Defense has become a major industry for both the company’s machine sales and part production segments. 

“We’re seeing things in the National Defense Authorization Act, with language specifically restricting you cannot buy Chinese equipment to produce additive components for any government-funded thing,” says Matt Karesh, head of defense at Velo3D. “We’ve intentionally stayed away from all of those adversarial nations, not only from a supply chain perspective, but we also have never sold into them. It’s, I think, maybe refreshing to see that there’s actually like some traction behind [made in the U.S.A.]. People are actually making decisions with that in mind, and putting that near the top of their list rather than a nice add-on.”

Postprocessing Gets More Automated

As the 3D printers themselves get faster and more productive, postprocessing remains a bottleneck to be overcome; IMTS 2026 saw introductions and exhibits of systems that can help AM users depowder, clean and finish printed parts more efficiently and repeatably.

Depowdering solutions provider Solukon showcased its SFM-AT350 depowdering system, equipped with the company’s SPR-Pathfinder Pro software solution. Just using the print file, the Pathfinder Pro can identify all internal channels within a part that require depowdering, create a precise postprocessing plan, offer exact time predictions and provide cross-sectional views for the operator. With the Pathfinder Pro, the operator can optimize the postprocessing of their specific part before printing, resulting in a repeatable, more customizable depowdering process.

The SFM-AT350 itself is similarly designed with versatility and repeatability in mind. The system can be used with any laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) 3D printer, no matter the size or brand.

The Jayco Mafac Java was not designed specifically for additively manufactured parts, but offers an effective way to clear powder from internal channels with a combination of vacuum and ultrasonic action. 

Downstream from initial depowdering, Jayco Cleaning Technologies exhibited a vacuum-assisted cleaning unit, the Mafac Java. Designed for parts with internal features (3D printed or otherwise) such as suppressors and heat exchangers, the system uses a combination of technologies to clean powder from interior features. Parts fixtured in the rotary basket are sprayed with fluid including a detergent that reduces the boundary layer; once the tank is filled, vacuum-assisted processing reduces the surface tension of the water, enabling better wetting of the powder particles. An ultrasonic effect shakes the material loose so that it can be flushed from the part. Typical cycle times for additive parts are around 1-4 hours, the company says, and recipes are repeatable for consistent results every time.

Guyson USA, a provider of surface finishing systems, also highlighted its postprocessing solutions for 3D printed parts at the show. The company uses its proprietary abrasive blasting systems to finish 3D printed parts, while also utilizing its own in-house 3D printers to prototype parts, aiming to better understand the proper cleaning and finishing of complex geometries.

In a partnership with HP, Guyson developed the MultiBlast3D blasting chamber for parts produced using HP Multi Jet Fusion technology. The system is designed to be compact and quiet, containing rapid dust removal capabilities; optimized components and machine settings for HP parts; an air wash blow-off nozzle; and a quick change from single use to continuous use media for fast, precise postprocessing. The MultiBlast3D can also be used to finish parts manufactured using selective laser sintering (SLS), fused filament fabrication (FFF), stereolithography (SLA) and LPBF technologies.

In Progress: Faster Paths to Qualification

One final trend taking shape at and around IMTS 2026 was clearing of pathways to qualify additive parts. EOS and Phase3D for example announced a partnership to bring the latter’s Fringe Inspection technology to EOS LBPF machines. Fringe Inspection uses controlled illumination cameras to measure the height of each layer and monitor variations in the surface; according to Phase3D, the measurement data has the potential to enable “born qualified” parts, and projects with users such as Northrop Gumman are underway to prove out its potential.

Faster qualification methods that depend less on destructive testing are needed, and this is a space we’ll be watching.

Source | Airbus

The Airbus (Toulouse, France) A350F freighter MSN 700, the first of two test aircraft, has completed its first flight. Airbus says the freighter’s construction comprises more than 70% advanced materials.

The aircraft flew for 4 hours and 10 minutes and reached 25,000 feet. The dedicated Airbus Flight Test crew verified basic airworthiness and fundamental flying qualities and confirmed that basic systems performed as predicted. The flight starts a test campaign of more than 9 months. The second prototype (MSN 701) is in advanced final assembly and will enter the paint shop within weeks.

Airbus reports the A350F has a range of up to 8,700 kilometers and a payload of up to 111 tonnes with a maximum takeoff weight that is 46 tonnes lower than that of competitor aircraft. Powered by Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engines, the aircraft offers up to 40% lower fuel consumption and carbon emissions than competitor aircraft, says Airbus, with similar payload range capability. It calls the A350F the “first new freighter to fully meet the latest ICAO CO_₂ emission standards,” and with 115 orders from 14 disclosed customers as of the end of August, Airbus notes it has captured up to 59% of the large freighter market.

Composites on the freighter

Much of the A350F’s composite structure comes from Airbus’ Illescas plant near Madrid, Spain. According to CW’s tour of the facility, the site makes Section 19 fuselage barrels for the A350-900 and -1000 as well as the freighter. Carrying loads from the horizontal and vertical tail planes, each barrel is 5.7 meters long and about 4 meters in diameter, using 589 kilograms of carbon fiber/epoxy prepreg to cover 53 square meters. It is Airbus’ first composite Section 19 produced as a single piece, noting the A380 version was made in six sections and joined.

Two AFP machines lay up the skin on aluminum mandrels, while automated tape laying (ATL) machines and hot drape forming produce 42 omega stringers per barrel. Skin and stringers are co-cured in one autoclave cycle. All composite parts at Illescas use carbon fiber/epoxy prepreg, mostly from Hexcel (Stamford, Conn., U.S.).

The same site also makes the A350F’s composite main deck cargo door, as CW reported earlier in 2026. Illescas manufactures the door skins and assembles the door, which has an electrical open/close actuation system and is reported to be the largest in the industry. The first door went to Airbus’ final assembly line in Toulouse for installation on the first test aircraft. Once serial production starts, doors will ship from Illescas to Hamburg, Germany, for integration into the aft fuselage.

Source | Airbus

Airbus (Toulouse, France) is accelerating its global industrial strategy, converting its former A380 wing production facility into an A321 line in Broughton, U.K. Set to be completed by the end of the year, this latest investment ensures Airbus’ “Home of Wings” is well prepared to meet future aircraft production targets. 

The expansion is a significant boost for the U.K. aerospace industry capability. Once completed, the facility will host six wing production jigs, an equipping line and paint shop, specifically designed to feed the backlog of around 7,500 A320 Family aircraft, of which around 75% are A321s.  

Across the Broughton site, the manufacturer has also created around 480 jobs in 2026, including 250 positions in the refurbished factory. These roles join the 6,000-strong workforce in Broughton, signaling Airbus’ long-term commitment to Wales and reinforcing the U.K.’s position as a critical hub in the global aerospace industry.

At the heart of this investment is a new, advanced manufacturing environment, designed and built with direct involvement from operators across the site. Employees fed into the ergonomics and technology integration to shape the industrial system.

“We aren’t just talking about a ramp-up; we’re putting the infrastructure in place to support it. Around the world today, an A320 Family aircraft takes off or lands every 2 seconds, with wings designed and built in the U.K. Investing in our capacity strengthens our industrial footprint, creates high-value jobs that support the wider U.K. aerospace sector and ensures we remain competitive in the years to come,” says Jerome Blandin, head of Airbus Wing. “This investment is important for jobs, important for the region and important for our global ramp up toward rate 75.” 

The first wing is already underway, with all jigs expected to be operational by the end of the year.  

This latest investment builds on the recently announced multi-million pound investment in Airbus’ Belfast facility, which will expand the wing manufacturing footprint and advanced composite capabilities to support A220 ramp-up. 

Source | Albany Engineered Composites

Albany Engineered Composites (Rochester, N.H., U.S.), a segment of Albany International Corp., announced that its AEC Advanced Programs Inc. business has received a new contract, with a total value of $21.2 million over the 30-month period of performance, through the U.S. government’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) program for Strengthening America’s Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base (SAMDIB).

The award, through the U.S. Army Contracting Command – Rock Island and Cornerstone Other Transaction Authority (OTA), supports the development of carbon-carbon (C/C) composite thermal protection systems (TPS) for hypersonic vehicles and solid rocket motors (SRM). The effort focuses on advancing, scalable manufacturing capabilities for critical extreme-environment defense applications.

Albany will leverage its experience in advanced composites manufacturing, including 3D-woven, near-net shape preforms and resin transfer molding (RTM), together with C/C densification capabilities.

The IBAS program focuses on establishing a vertically integrated production facility for C/C composites manufacturing, creating critical domestic industrial base capacity for the continued development and scalable production of cost-effective TPS for hypersonics and SRMs. It includes engineering studies, facility planning, supplier selection, procurement and installation of key manufacturing equipment and development of the infrastructure required to support C/C composite TPS production.

Over the last few months, Albany Engineered Composites has also announced new developments with Lockheed Martin (also related to hypersonics), a partnership with A&P Technology, and more commercial aerospace-focused contracts with Pratt & Whitney and Boeing.

Source | Boeing

Albany Engineered Composites (AEC, Rochester, N.H., U.S.), a segment of Albany International Corp., has reached an agreement with Boeing (Arlington, Va., U.S.) to continue composite fuselage frame manufacturing for the 787 Dreamliner.

Under the agreement, Albany continues to manufacture about 300 unique composite fuselage frames for the 787 Dreamliner, including forward sections 41 and 43 and aft section 47. Albany has produced composite fuselage frames for Sections 41 and 43 since Boeing’s original award in 2014.

“We are excited to continue this partnership, built over more than a decade of successful collaboration,” says Chris Stone, president of AEC. “Albany is fully committed to supporting the ramp of the 787 program with the consistency, quality and reliability our customers have come to expect from Albany. We remain focused on delivering high-performance components at scale while continuing to advance our manufacturing efficiency and operational excellence across the business.”

The Boeing 787 work is performed at Albany’s facility in Salt Lake City, Utah.

AEC designs and manufactures advanced engineered composite components for engine and airframe applications in commercial and military aircraft, missiles and unmanned vehicles. The company is also partnering with A&P Technology that will combine RTM and braiding expertise for aerospace and defense, and an agreement with Lockheed Martin to advance hypersonic systems.

Through its "3D Printing for Drones" initiative, America Makes will host half-day, immersive Design + Build + Fly experiences in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Alabama and California, giving students an opportunity to explore how 3D printing, engineering and drone technology come together to solve real-world challenges. All events will be held October 2, 2026.

During the events, students will step into the role of an additive manufacturing engineer, working through a series of challenges related to drone design and deployment. They will consider factors such as weight, battery management, manufacturability, reliability and mission requirements while designing and building functional components. Students will also participate in mentor-led activities, safety instruction, design challenges, prototyping and build sprints before putting their work to the test.

Event Details

Youngstown, Ohio
Time: 8:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. EST
Location: Mahoning County Career and Technical Center, 7300 N. Palmyra Rd., Canfield, OH 44406

Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Time: 12–3 p.m. EST
Location: Conemaugh Township High School, 300 West Campus Ave., Davidsville, PA 15928

El Paso, Texas
Time: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. MST
Location: La Nube STEAM Discovery Center, 201 W. Main Dr., El Paso, TX 79901

Huntsville, Alabama
Time: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. CST
Location: U.S. Space & Rocket Center, One Tranquility Base, Huntsville, AL 35805

Riverside, California
Time: 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PST
Location: Inland Empire Technical Trade Center at Perris, 19 South D St., Perris, CA 92570

For more information about America Makes and its Education and Workforce Development initiatives, visit americamakes.us.

The U.K.’s Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) has committed £70 million to 18 engineering teams developing aircraft for extended stratospheric operation.  The funding, announced under ARIA’s Enduring Atmospheric Platforms program and reported by The Engineer, targets aircraft able to continuously supply 300 watts of power to a communications payload for a full week while holding station above the U.K. Success would establish a new infrastructure layer between Earth and space, delivering connectivity to underserved regions in the U.K. and worldwide.

Part of the Structural Solar team, Limosaero is developing solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Source | Limosaero

One project, led by David G. Lidzey at the University of Sheffield (Sheffield, U.K.), uses carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) as a structural substrate for perovskite photovoltaics. The full team also includes members from AMRC Sheffield, solar-powered drone/UAV developer Limosaero (Cambridge, U.K.) and University of Loughborough.

The project, titled “Structural Solar: Integrating perovskite PV onto carbon fiber for high specific power,” is one of eight teams funded under Technical Area 1 (Enabling Technologies), which backs materials and power technologies intended to de-risk development of a full stratospheric platform. It aims to develop high-performance, spray-cast perovskite solar cells (PSCs) integrated onto CFRP substrates to power enduring
atmospheric platforms.

By using low-temperature, solution-processed materials, this approach targets a specific power of up to 10X photovoltaic efficiency per unit mass compared to conventional gallium arsenide (GaAs) technologies while offering disruptive cost reductions. The resulting PSC/CFRP composite panels will then be engineered to enable long-endurance, solar-powered flight by combining established manufacturing processes with innovative thin-film coatings preventing impacts from moisture infiltration.

The approach builds on Lidzey’s earlier published research combining perovskite photovoltaics with CFRP substrates. That work showed this approach produces materials with high mechanical strength that also generate electrical power. The goal is multifunctional structures that are lightweight yet provide energy-harvesting capacity in aerospace and automotive applications. Lidzey’s group has since demonstrated spray-coating perovskite cells directly onto CFRP, including curved surfaces, reaching efficiencies of about 14%.

For a high-altitude pseudo-satellite (HAPS) aircraft, embedding power generation into a load-bearing carbon fiber composite skin removes the added mass of a separate photovoltaic layer — an advantage for the endurance target of the ARIA program.

ARIA is backing a range of approaches, says Rico Chandra, program director for Enduring Atmospheric Platforms at ARIA, “from fixed-wing solar aircraft to designs nobody predicted, including aircraft that fly on spinning wings instead of propellers.” Sixteen of the 18 funded teams are based in the U.K.; two more, based in Australia and the U.S., are relocating operations to the U.K. as a result of the award.

Source (All Images) | Addcomposites

In my blog post on the damage lightning causes to painted composite panels, I summarized a study by Bigand, et al. on painted carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) skins, which showed that for identical laminates (13 plies of prepreg) with identical expanded copper foil protection, internal delamination went from near-zero on unpainted panels to 412 square centimeters on ones with a thick coat of industry-standard polyurethane paint. This damage, caused by a surface-confinement effect, is decided in the first few plies of the laminate and also can be difficult to measure accurately in ultrasonic testing (UT) C-scans, which must be performed from the rear face to avoid the metal containing layers at top.

Lightning strike damage in Fig. 4 from Bigand, A.; Espinosa, C.; Bauchire, J.-M. “Destructive and Non-Destructive Analysis of Lightning-Induced Damage in Protected and Painted Composite Aircraft Laminates” © 2025 by the authors, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

If lightning strike damage to CFRP parts is decided at the top of the laminate, what would a conductive layer specifically designed to control that region look like, and what would it require from the manufacturing process? To me, the answer is a specifically designed layer that is placed precisely so that the controlled conductive architecture serves not only as a lightning shield but also as a damage sensor, de-icing heater and digital record of itself. What follows is my exploration of this engineering position, based on the published results of various groups (see the references at the end).

Established toolkit vs. an architected layer

Lightning strike protection (LSP) for composite aircraft is a mature field dominated by metal options: expanded bronze, copper or aluminum foil, woven wire mesh, conductive surface films and metallized fibers, fabrics and veils. These are most often applied as a surfacing layer and qualified against aerospace lightning environment standards including the SAE ARP5412 waveform set, ARP5414 zoning (Zones 1A, 1B, 2A and so on) and ARP5416/EUROCAE ED-105 test methods that back the certification requirements per FAR Parts 23, 25 and 27.

The issue discussed here is not with the materials, but their integration. As the Bigand et al. results clearly show, the protected laminate behaves completely differently depending on its exterior surface, thus they should be designed and built together.

Figure 1. Conceptual rendering showing traditional copper grid conductive layer placed within the laminate and co-cured with the carbon plies.

Metal mesh and foil LSP are typically co-cured with the structural laminate, either placed by hand or using automated fiber placement (AFP) as the outermost ply. Most part manufacturers today use prepregs or surfacing films with pre-embedded LSP material, laying these as the exterior ply (e.g., first down in a female/outer mold line tool). However, their role in the laminate is only protection. Supplied and placed as a uniform sheet, they provide the same conductivity everywhere.

With AFP, the amount of conductor present and how it’s connected can be set locally by varying ply count, course overlap and/or gaps between courses. Thus, conductivity becomes a designed variable rather than a fixed property of the sheet. The part can now include high-conductivity zones that act as charge sinks where a strike is likely to attach and thinner, more linear paths that steer current away elsewhere.

Figure 2. A lightning strike protection (LSP) layer is defined by its sheet resistance (ohms-per-square, Ω/□) where lower sheet resistance means more conductivity. AFP can tailor that locally through ply count, course overlap and programmed gaps, so that the layer is most conductive where strikes attach (Zone 1 per SAE ARP5414) and carries the current cleanly to the airframe bonding or grounding points.

This isn’t speculative. Hybrid metal and CFRP laminates have been designed and built using a robotic AFP cell¹ to achieve dual-layer conductive/insulating LSP stacks and tested to validate performance.² Built using Addcomposite Oy’s (Helsinki, Finland) AFP-XS robotic cell, the conductive layer was applied within the same automated sequence as the structural plies, orienting it where needed and tailoring connectivity across the part.

Recent work has shown that tailoring the through-thickness conductive architecture directly changes the lightning strike damage response.³ Meanwhile, automated placement for laying overlapping conductive courses are established prior art. This is a design-architecture problem, precisely the kind of high-dimensional layout that modern AI-assisted design tools are well suited to optimize for a given part, load case and strike zone.

One placed layer, multiple functions

A tailored conductive architecture in a laminate can also be designed to provide additional functions such as heating and sensing. Using a precise architecture and placement thus extend protection cost into an operational and performance advantage.

Heating. The same integrated conductive interlayer can carry current to produce heat for de-icing, for example in leading edges. Metallized thermoplastic nonwovens have already been integrated into fiber-reinforced composites and shown to work as both electrothermal heating elements and sensing layers in one part.

Figure 3. Conceptual rendering showing how a conductive LSP layer can also be used for Joule heating for de-icing control surfaces (top) and as a sensor (bottom) identifying location and size of damage (red) where local resistance changes.

Sensing. A conductive grid placed to a known geometry is a calibrated grid. Because the location of each conductive ply is known, changes in the electrical and electromagnetic signature can be analyzed to determine damage location and severity in the structure underneath. Real-time self-sensing structural health monitoring (SHM) has been demonstrated in AFP-manufactured parts, and a purpose-designed conductive veil grid has been used as both a structural interlayer and a multi-point damage sensor in CFRP and glass fiber (GFRP) laminates. Turning the LSP into a sensing grid is the direction Addcomposites is pursuing in the final phase of the EU TOSCA project.

Digital thread. Every course, gap and overlap AFP lays down is recorded. That as-built map lets you: (1) verify that the conductive architecture was manufactured as designed, (2) interpret the sensing grid against a known baseline and (3) define the post-strike inspection envelope. Note, the Bigand, et al. study mentioned that UT inspection tended to under report lightning strike damage. This approach provides a path to mitigate that.

Thus, one placed layer weighs in across multiple benefits — LSP, sensing, heating and improved inspection — but only once in grams.

Increased fleets using CFRP, converging path forward

Lightning strikes on commercial aircraft are already routine — once per year or every 30,000 flight hours on average. However, the total number of airframes exposed to that risk is increasing. For example, advanced air mobility (AAM) fleets of eVTOL aircraft are expected to grow substantially over the next few decades, with forecasts ranging from roughly 7,000 to 30,000 aircraft in service by 2050. Like conventional commercial airframes, most eVTOL structures rely heavily on CFRP for flight control structures, but also in wing and fuselage components. Each of these aircraft must still meet LSP requirements while carrying as little added weight as possible. As these and future next-generation single-aisle aircraft — also projected to use increased amounts of CFRP — scale in the coming decade, a layer that protects, heats and senses no longer offers just a marginal gain but starts affecting the weight budget across entire fleets.

This is a design proposition, and concept laminates must still earn zoning per the aerospace standards listed above. The Bigand, et al. study did not address manufacturing, thus any error in drawing from its results is ours. However, literature is already converging separately on each of the pieces  we’ve presented; our contribution and assertion is they should be designed and placed as a single, tailored, multifunctional layer.

References

¹M. M. A. Ammar, B. Shirinzadeh, P. Zhao, Y. Shi, “An approach for damage initiation and propagation in metal and carbon fibre hybrid composites manufactured by robotic fibre placement,” Composite Structures 2021, 268, 113976. doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2021.113976

²H. Zhu, K. Fu, H. Liu, B. Yang, Y. Chen, C. Kuang, Y. Li, “Design a dual-layer lightning strike protection for carbon fibre reinforced composites,” Composites Part B 2022, 247, 110330. doi.org/10.1016/j.compositesb.2022.110330

³V. Kumar, W. Lin, Y. Wang, R. Spencer, S. Saha, C. Park, et al., “Enhanced through-thickness electrical conductivity and lightning strike damage response of interleaved vertically aligned short carbon fibre composites,” Composites Part B 2023, 253, 110535. doi.org/10.1016/j.compositesb.2023.110535

⁴P. Latko-Durałek, M. Misiak, D. T. Ufaysa, N. Tao, B. Przybyszewski, P. Durałek, D. Rutkowska, M. Kurkowska, A. Anisimov, O. Bergsma, R. M. Groves, A. Boczkowska, “Metallized thermoplastic nonwovens as integrated heating elements in fibre-reinforced composites,” Materials Today Communications 2026, 53, 115313. doi.org/10.1016/j.mtcomm.2026.115313

⁵Y. Ji, C. Luan, X. Yao, Z. Ding, C. Niu, N. Dong, L. Cheng, K. Zhao, J. Fu, “Real-time in-service structural health monitoring method based on self-sensing of CF/PEEK prepreg in automated fibre placement (AFP) manufactured parts,” Composites Part A 2025, 194, 108925. doi.org/10.1016/j.compositesa.2025.108925

⁶O. C. Zehni, A. Kandemir, “Multifunctional carbon-veil grid design for impact damage monitoring and tolerance in GFRP and CFRP laminates,” Materials & Design 2026, 263, 115608. doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2026.115608

About the Author

Pravin Luthada

Pravin Luthada is CEO and co-founder of Addcomposites Oy. He began his career as a space scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) manufacturing composite components for satellites and launch vehicles, where the cost of conventional AFP equipment convinced him there was room for a cheaper approach. He co-founded Addcomposites to build plug-and-play AFP toolheads that mount on standard industrial robots. The company is democratizing advanced manufacturing by making composites automation accessible and affordable.

Rod Zastrow, Bye Aerospace CEO, holds the newly awarded FAA Special Airworthiness Certificate for eFlyer 2, Serial No 001. Source | Bye Aerospace

On Sept. 9, Bye Aerospace (Denver, Colo., U.S.) announced that it is progressing its flagship all-electric training aircraft, eFlyer 2, with Special Airworthiness certification awarded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

A detailed aircraft inspection occurred at the Centennial Airport near Denver, where Bye is completing flight preparations. The FAA meticulously reviewed eFlyer 2’s airframe, electric propulsion system, instruments and other functional systems to confirm its safety for operation.

“Every major milestone in an aircraft program is earned, and this one is the result of intense effort and dedication from a talented team that is passionate about what we do,” notes Rod Zastrow, CEO of Bye Aerospace. “We’ve worked hand in hand with the FAA since 2016 to help advance the certification framework for electric aircraft. In just a year, we’ve built and tested this all-electric aircraft, and receiving the Special Airworthiness Certificate is an important validation of that work. We look forward to beginning flight testing and continuing our progress toward certification.”

The Bye team completed the structural build of the eFlyer 2 in July 2026, following several months of rigorous structural testing and propulsion system validation using a truck mounted test rig called “The Beast.” Since then, engineers and technicians have been conducting final aircraft systems integration, further electrical system validation and operational ground testing before beginning the flight test program.

With months of ground testing complete, Bye Aerospace is now focused on final aircraft inspections, operational readiness activities and preparing to launch a phased flight test program that will progressively expand the aircraft’s operating envelope.

CW has covered the composites-intensive aircraft across the whole program timeline:

• Bye Aerospace Expands eFlyer Operations to Larger Hangar (March 2019) — Early growth milestone, still calling the aircraft by its former name, Sun Flyer.
• Bye Aerospace Closes $10 Million in Funding (July 2020) — Funding round enabling work on the first eFlyer 2 production-conforming prototype.
• Bye Aerospace Unveils Eight-Seat All-Electric eFlyer 800 (May 2021) — Launch of the larger eFlyer 800 twin-turboprop-class program.
• Rheinland Air Service Orders Bye Aerospace eFlyer 800s (July 2021) — First European MRO/reseller partnership and purchase deposits.
• Bye Aerospace All-Electric eFlyer 800 Program Advances (Jan. 2022) — Backlog growth across the eFlyer lineup.
• Bye Aerospace eFlyer2 Approved for Flight Test Certification (Feb. 2023) — FAA G-2 Means of Compliance milestone for the composite-fuselage eFlyer 2.
• Bye Aerospace’s eFlyer 2 Achieves FAA Acceptance for Functional Hazard Analysis (Sept. 2023) — Next certification milestone toward Part 23 Amendment 64.
• Bye Aerospace Gains Momentum With 30 eFlyer Aircraft Purchase (Jan. 2024) — Order book growth past 880 units and $1.4 billion.
• Initial Build Has Begun for Bye Aerospace eFlyer 2 Fixed-Wing Aircraft (Sept. 2024) — Construction start on Serial Number 00001, the all-composite prototype.
• Bye Aerospace Selects Composites Approach to Build eFlyer 2 (Dec. 2025) — Most recent coverage: manufacturing partner named for the first structural composite eFlyer.

Source (All Images) | Cambium

Cambium (El Segundo, California, U.S.) was founded in 2019 by CEO Simon Waddington and CMO Stephan Herrera, both formerly of biotech firm Evolva. The company currently has 250 employees and develops advanced polymers and composite materials for aerospace, defense and other high-performance sectors, but is also targeting broader markets. Its most recent messaging notes that Cambium integrates AI-driven materials discovery, rapid product development, industrialized qualification and flexible manufacturing into a single operating system, compressing time and cost from invention to qualified production.

Shortly after its founding it established this domestic production as well as defense-related R&D support including a completed contract with the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) and a DARPA collaboration aimed at replacing structural titanium with ultra-lightweight polymers.

In December 2025, Cambium acquired SHD Composites (Sleaford, U.K. and Mooresville, N.C., U.S.), a company well known for its innovative, high-quality products, agility, customer support and fast response time. Now a Cambium company, SHD has maintained its leadership, adding previous Cambium board director Brett Schneider as president of SHD and Cambium Composites. SHD has also maintained its production sites, including at its U.K. and U.S. headquarters, an additional U.S. facility in Oklahoma and one in Slovenia.

In January 2026, Cambium closed a $100 million Series B funding round led by 8VC (Austin, Texas, U.S.), with participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, Veteran Ventures Capital and MVP Ventures. With SHD Composites, Cambium has now established a global innovation and manufacturing supply chain, and in 2026, SHD Composites announced a slate of new developments:

• Wide-format UD prepreg, film coating lines, accelerating development cycles and supporting more ambitious composite designs.
• MTC521FR, a new flame-retardant clear epoxy prepreg for visually critical carbon fiber components requiring certified fire performance.
• MTC700 toughened epoxy prepreg with capability up to 200°C and a dual-cure profile to meet motorsport and other high-performance manufacturers’ needs.
• Bio-based, FST-compliant FR308 resin for next-gen aircraft seating with Safran Group and others in the EcoSuite project.
• Quadrupling of its Mooresville, N.C. facility in the U.S.
• CEM101 cyanate ester prepreg with enhanced service temperature and dielectric performance for aerospace, space, defense and motorsport.
• SFX740-LS, SFX740-LW and SFX740-HF surface films for lightning strike protection, low-temperature out-of-autoclave (OOA) cure and no postprocessing after molding.

These show recurring themes of high performance, ease of processing and accelerated development cycles for more ambitious composite designs in aerospace, space, defense and motorsport. These are indeed the central pillars to Cambium’s approach. But it has a vision for much more.

From biotech to bio-enabled composites

Chief informatics officer Tim Gardner’s journey reflects that of Cambium to some degree — moving from biotech to its current “bio-enabled” and AI-focused approach to speed development and innovation in composites and other advanced materials. It also helps to provide a landscape and frame of reference for Cambium, as there really hasn’t been a company like this in composites before.

Cambium’s technical capabilities.

“I joined Cambium in 2024, and am relatively new to composites,” Gardner explains, “having spent most of my career in biotech. I actually started in mechanical and aerospace engineering, with an interest in robotics and automation. But I ended up building out capability to biosynthesize chemicals for a company that was genetically engineering yeast to produce oils from sugarcane. We scaled that up to a 1.2 million-liter production volume [tank capacity] in Brazil, but the company struggled economically because it’s hard for bio-based materials to compete with the cost of oil-based products.”

There are other factors that make bio-based materials production challenging, Gardner adds. “Biology is good at exquisite design of molecules that operate in low temperature or room temperature [RT] regimes, but it’s difficult to engineer those materials for tailored performance because that requires redesigning cellular enzymes and metabolism — a very hard problem. For example, some of the compounds relevant to high-performance applications like aerospace are toxic to microbes or involve oxygen-sensitive biochemistry that doesn’t work under normal bioprocessing conditions.”

By the mid-2000s, says Gardner, “I had started to get more interested in the software that underpins effective R&D organizations. What makes organizations capable of being agile and effective at discovering solutions to technical problems? I ended up starting a software-as-a-service company in 2014 that developed cloud-based software for experimental and process design, data integration and analytics.” He then sold that company to Siemens and spent the next 3 years at a large company in biotech. “Along the way, I reconnected with the cofounders of Cambium — Stephan Herrera [now chief marketing officer] and Simon Waddington, CEO. We all came from a similar background — bioproduction of chemicals and biosynthesis — and I had gotten to know them through that part of my career. I reached out to Stephan 3 years ago because I saw what they were doing. At the time, Cambium included ‘Biomaterials’ in its name, but they were really a materials company trying to drive extreme performance in aerospace applications. I was inspired because that was essentially where I started my career, and I had always wanted to get back to spacecraft and pushing the boundaries of what was possible.”

Cambium combines biotech, digital technologies/ simulation, machine learning (ML) and AI to accelerate solutions in advanced materials with a focus on manufacturability and affordability while maintaining extreme performance.

The co-founders’ thesis for Cambium was very simple, he says. “There hadn’t really been any novel polymer classes commercialized since the 1980s. They recognized this huge innovation gap in polymer chemistry and also that biology has the potential to create and access trillions of novel chemicals, that wouldn’t be possible otherwise, via its exquisite chemical synthesis capability. Thus, there are underserved opportunities — particularly in extreme performance applications in defense, aerospace, automotive and elsewhere — where biology might hold the key to creating these advanced materials.”

Gardner was also enthused by Cambium’s approach. “Because it was bio-enabled — that could mean bio or synthesis, it was open — they would use whatever methods and technologies were needed to get advanced materials to viable commercial products. It also included a blend of the things that interest me: aerospace, biotech, digital technologies, AI and machine learning [ML].” These all came together as Gardner joined Cambium to be its CIO and develop the company’s AI and ML capabilities in computational chemistry, predictive modeling and quantum and atomistic simulation for material design.

Once at Cambium, Gardner notes his close collaboration with the third key player in the company’s formation, Andy Guenthner. “He’s the scientific founder and worked for the Air Force Research Lab and the Navy, with 30 years of experience in polymer chemistry, polymer physics and material design for extreme performance,” he explains. “Cambium recruited Andy to breathe life into its technology. He was then able to partner with a chief scientific officer at the NAWCWD in China Lake, and together they went through a variety of candidates and discovered these novel classes of phthalonitriles [PN].” The result was Cambium’s first commercial product for composites (see “Cambium launches ApexShield 1000 …”).

“Since then,” says Gardner, “Andy and I have worked to expand the foundations of the AI and quantum chemistry simulation capabilities that he had started, and to build the general AI capabilities supporting Cambium’s overall operations.”

PN and CMC

Gardner notes that PN formulations were developed decades ago by the U.S. Navy. “They just didn’t get developed to the point of commercial utility.” PN resins have been in development by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) since the 1980s but sat in a chronic underinvestment gap without the funding required to scale up from lab-scale monomer to manufacturable, qualifiable and cost-effective products. Although early PN formulations used the OSHA-regulated carcinogen methylenedianiline (MDA) as a curing agent, later systems moved away in favor of alternative aromatic diamines. The main issue was processability.

Cambium’s opportunity came when defense funding priorities shifted. U.S. hypersonics spending had lapsed after the X-51 program wound down around 2013. But urgency returned after Russia’s 2018 unveiling of hypersonic weapons and China’s 2021 hypersonic glide vehicle test. These applications require lightweight, high-temperature materials like ceramic matrix composite (CMC) for structures and thermal protective shielding/thermal protection systems (TPS).

Cambium worked with NAWCWD to develop a combination of bio-based core molecules as precursors and fused those with phthalonitrile (PN) chemistry to create a novel polymer that was easier to manufacture into composites for high-temp applications.

“Andy and NAWCWD discovered a combination of bio-based core molecules as precursors, and fused them with PN chemistry,” says Gardner. “The result was a novel, high-performance thermoset polymer that could withstand temperatures above 400°C but were processable, with the right viscosity to be manufactured at near RT. They had great potential for composite TPS and possibly structures as well.”

With further development, this became ApexShield 1000, he explains, which can operate at extreme temperatures and also be heat treated to form carbon fiber-reinforced carbon (C/C) with a roughly 70% reduction in process time (see “High-temp resin eliminates hypersonic composite part bottlenecks” ). Such carbide CMC are increasingly sought after for high performance at temperatures above 1600°C, but have traditionally been very expensive and required months to manufacture. Unlike metals and ceramics that weaken when heated, C/C gets stronger as temperature increases up to ~2200°C, allowing it to withstand intense aerodynamic stresses.

Cambium has developed ApexShield resin systems to enable faster production of ablative carbon/carbon (C/C) composites for applications like rocket motor nozzles, hypersonic leading edges and re-entry nose tips.

C/C composites also function well as high-temperature ablatives. Unlike polymeric ablators (such as carbon fiber-reinforced phenolic), which rely heavily on the resin’s decomposition into gas, C/C composites rely primarily on thermochemical ablation, sublimation and radiative cooling. They undergo a controlled degradation to absorb, block and dissipate extreme thermal energy for applications like spacecraft atmospheric re-entry nose tips, hypersonic leading edges, TPS and rocket motor nozzles.

Cambium has also released ApexShield 3000, a PN coating engineered for metallic and composite substrates operating at extreme temperatures, such as in hypersonic flight. It enables electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency (RF) shielding for electronics and commercial programs requiring wavelength-tunable performance.

“That first molecule that Cambium developed is not a structural composite material,” says Gardner, “but it serves a valuable role in TPS because it’s easier to manufacture and able to achieve the target performance of ablatives and C/C. That’s really key because it gives the U.S. a path for a resilient supply chain and rapid production [see “U.S. Navy contract to advance Cambium C/C composites for hypersonics”]. Part production drops from 6-9 months down to 1 month. That was one of Cambium’s first novel products, but there are plenty of others now, either released or in the pipeline for commercialization.”

Use of AI and Schrödinger tools, inverse design

This issue of tackling processability and scalability while maintaining or tailoring performance is complexity. “It’s figuring out how to meet all those factors at the same time,” notes Gardner. “You solve one and you break another, but there are typically 10 factors, not two. If you iterate through that process sequentially and serially, in the traditional way, it takes years and you can’t possibly test all the things you want to. That’s where AI, ML and simulation come in. Cambium can now screen millions, if not billions, of molecules.”

Cambium’s fusion AI architecture enables scalable, continuous training on any type of data (chemical, physical, biological) and is being advanced to enable both forward (molecule to property) and inverse design (desired property to output candidate molecules and formulations).

“We’ve also been developing inverse design, where you specify the properties you want and with the help of AI and simulation you get a set of perhaps 20 molecules that would likely have those properties. It’s the Holy Grail for this type of molecular design,” he continues. “We have an AI model, a type of transformer neural network, that is getting close to being able to do that.”

As explained in a CW article with Schrödinger (New York, N.Y., U.S.), inverse design/development is a key part of the materials informatics (MI) paradigm shift, where ML and AI are used to dramatically reduce the time required to develop new materials and optimize how they are processed (see “Schrödinger advances MI for faster development of next-gen composites”): “But it goes even further, not only accelerating the forward direction of innovation — realizing properties for suggested candidate materials — but also enabling inverse development, where novel materials are suggested based on input of desired properties.”

Cambium uses a variety of in-house and commercial products for its computational capabilities, including Schrödinger tools for atomistic simulation, such as this 33,000-atom simulated DGEBA-propylene diamine network at 98% cure.

Cambium uses Schrödinger’s tools for atomistic simulation and quantum simulation, says Gardner, “but we’re agnostic with our computational capability, the same as we are about the source of our molecules. We’ll take whatever works.” He explains that quantum simulation is typically looking at one molecule, the arrangement and energy states of its electrons and how these influence molecular properties.

“The atomistic tool is used in simulating formulations at the scale of maybe 500 molecules — equivalent to roughly 20,000 or 30,000 atoms, depending on the molecule,” he continues. “You can then simulate what happens physically, and from that calculate properties. For example, we can screen and identify processability properties like fluid flow, ease of handling and tackiness while maintaining strength and toughness at high temperature.”

“But there are certain things that simulation cannot predict yet because there’s not sufficient experimental data or physics modeling capability. For example, a fast quantum simulation takes 12 hours for one molecule, which means analyzing a million molecules just isn’t possible. That’s where ML and AI come in. Instead of literally using physics to predict how things are going to work, we use AI to produce a statistical approximation. It’s the same as using ChatGPT or Claude. Those AI models don’t literally have cognition; they have a statistical approximation of the world’s knowledge and use that to predict the most likely response. Cambium is using AI to do the same thing. We collapse all of the physics into a statistical prediction of how a material is going to behave to complete in seconds what it would take 12, 24 or 72 hours on a typical atomistic simulation. You don’t necessarily know why that molecule gives you the desired outcome, or you may only partially understand it, but that doesn’t necessarily matter if you can get an accurate prediction nonetheless.”

Cambium’s screening of >860 candidates for PN resins showed that the commonly perceived trade-off between ease of processing (low viscosity) and thermal performance (char yield) has many exceptions.

Everything in science is an approximation, notes Gardner. “It’s just a question of how perfect an approximation. The neural networks we use can map between molecules and properties in both directions. We do a really good job from molecule and mixture formulation to property. Actually, most of the AI technologies to date have only worked on predicting what a molecule does. We can predict what a formulation does, and that’s a key advance. Going from property to molecule, we’re using this multimodal architecture of property and molecule fused together, and we’ve succeeded in beating property prediction benchmarks. We’re getting closer and closer.”

Target markets, moving beyond aero and defense

These accelerated development capabilities are first being applied to resin development in composites, says Gardner, but he adds the most exciting thing for Cambium these days is the acquisition of SHD Composites due to the path it provides toward wider application of the materials being developed.

“Lightweight materials for automotive body panels, for example, must compete with steel’s fast stamping of parts, fatigue resistance and all these additional properties that enable safety performance. That’s pretty hard to achieve all together, so we still have a way to go before we can replace automotive steel at scale. But a lot of the technologies we’ve developed to push toughness at extreme temperatures are finding immediate application, such as for thermal insulation—foams that are fire resistant—or side impact panels that can withstand thousands of pounds of intrusion force yet are lightweight. We’re increasingly turning our AI technologies towards those types of goals.”

Cambium’s acquisition of SHD Composites opens new markets and growth opportunities.

He notes SHD Composites has been serving those types of needs across a range of markets, including aircraft interiors, marine, motorsport and drones, as well as tooling for composites production. “SHD serves myriad carbon fiber and glass fiber composite applications and brings exposure for our AI and computational capabilities in these more conventional performance problems and their manufacturability needs.”

He cites Tesla’s July 2026 announcement about polymer body panels for its Cybercab vehicles as an example. The company will use a reaction injection molding (RIM) process that integrates color pigment into the polyurethane (PU) polymer mix injected into the mold, eliminating paint and speeding up subsequent clearcoating to shrink Cybercab paint cycles from hours to minutes. “This is something we had already envisioned as part of a future casting exercise, but we also see the industry’s interest to embed sensors and other multifunctionality. I see tremendous opportunity for Cambium and SHD Composites to create these new technologies for the consumer, where the limitation is often manufacturing more than performance. We’re not trying to replace auto body panels tomorrow, but we still see a wide range of opportunities for growth.”

But what about defense? “We began by seeking niche markets where high-performance materials are critical, but we are absolutely seeking the broadest set of markets, verticals and types of buyers,” says Gardner, “because we’re an advanced materials company, not a defense company.”

In July 2026, Cambium launched SentinelOps, a tunable solution for laser and directed energy protection that maintains high-fidelity vision needed by commercial and military pilots, firefighters and others. In September, it launched ApexFrame 5000, a PN-based laminating film adhesive for non-structural bonding of polymer films and metallic foils for sustained service up to 315°C and excursions to 427°C.

“Defense is a necessity, but it’s also a market that can tolerate costly materials initially and be the first buyer, then help advance R&D, bringing the cost curve down where you can access commercial markets. We have embraced defense for the purpose of filling the gap in advanced material development but we’d love our commercial markets to be 100 times bigger than our defense markets. The economic reality is that defense is actually a small market in terms of volume, and not something that would support all of our long-term ambitions.”

Cambium helped USCRPL’s Daybreak rocket reach space, using its ApexShield 1000 material to build the “boattail,” an aerodynamic shroud for the rocket nozzle.

What about more products for CMC? “The demand for high-temperature materials is being driven by rocket motors, TPS for space vehicles and satellites certainly,” says Gardner. “There are growing opportunities there, and we will continue to pursue those markets through new resins and new processing methods, including with different fibers. We also do a lot of prototyping of parts to help our customers understand the potential of such developments. For example, we helped with the University of Southern California Rocket Propulsion Laboratory’s [USCRPL] Daybreak rocket mission to teach them how to build these parts.”

“We will keep pursuing those opportunities, but we’re looking at other markets as well, which could include automotive,” adds Gardner, “but adhesives and coatings also offer a large area of opportunity, and there are other areas where we are already working.”

Reimagining the future of composites

What will Cambium look like in 5 years? “We want to be the world’s premier and largest supplier of prepregs, composites and advanced materials,” says Gardner. When asked if that means current industry leaders will have to take a back seat, he explains, “The advances we’re making have to happen. Achieving affordability and manufacturability has been a real obstacle for composites, and it’s not just defense markets and commercial consumers that need these solutions, but also the parts manufacturers and supply chains.” 

He explains how the acquisition of SHD Composites is part of this vision. “They have been so customer focused and agile, which is why they’ve been so successful. Building on our shared passion for innovation, we’re learning from their core culture and experience to shape Cambium’s global culture toward maximum customer responsiveness, agility, speed and delivery on customer needs from material design all the way through part prototyping. We’re reimagining the future and already changing what’s possible.”

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Source | Getty Images (top) and Yannick Willemin (bottom)

Cambium’s $100 Million Play: Fundraising Engineering Meets Composites Scale

Cambium's $100 million raise, acquisition of SHD Composites signal a bold strategy blending AI-driven materials innovation with proven composites production expertise.

Source | Cevotec

Cevotec (Unterhaching, Germany) and KCompositeLab (KCLab, Seoul, South Korea) have entered a commercial partnership to bring robotic lamination to composites manufacturers in South Korea. KCLab acts as Cevotec’s sales partner in the Korean market and supports customers technically — from the first feasibility assessment through process development to production ramp-up — leveraging its own composite engineering capabilities.

The partnership primarily targets two industries: manufacturers of aerospace and defense structures, and producers of composite pressure vessels for hydrogen storage. Sovereign aerospace programs, a rapidly expanding defense export industry and government-backed localization initiatives create sustained demand, while hydrogen mobility drives volume in composite tank production. The type of process automation demand from these industries match Cevotec’s equipment portfolio well.

Cevotec’s robotic lamination technology is based on the fiber patch placement (FPP) process, which has been developed in the aerospace industry for close to 20 years. Cevotec has been industrializing the technology during the past 10 years for series production. Robotic lamination equipment automates composite layup on complex 3D geometries. Robots place individual plies or patches of carbon fiber, glass fiber, prepreg or adhesive film onto complex-shaped molds; each patch can be individually oriented. This enables process automation for mid-sized, complex aircraft parts that typically fall outside the process window of established technologies that, for example, build aircraft wings and fuselages. As robotic lamination is not used in South Korea so far, it represents an opportunity for the industry to extent the automation envelope for high-quality, high-rate composites manufacturing.

For composite pressure vessels, the technology enables industrial production of dome reinforcements. These local reinforcements enable additional storage volume by reducing overall weight and material needed. According to Cevotec, this combination of cost and performance benefits is an attractive lever for Korean companies manufacturing Type 4 hydrogen tanks, which continue to serve a continuously growing hydrogen market in the region.

Cevotec, as technology and automation solution provider, is delivering Samba robotic lamination equipment, configured according to application requirements, programmed via digital twin in the Artist Studio CAD-CAM software. KCLab provides its own laboratory, material expertise and a network across the Korean composites industry. Korean manufacturers can therefore evaluate parts locally: feasibility checks, ROI calculations, design studies and process trials, facilitated through KCLab, in collaboration with Cevotec’s engineering team in Munich.

Beyond direct sales, both partners plan joint pilot and demonstration projects with Korean manufacturers and research institutes, technical workshops and a joint presence at Carbon Korea 2026 in Seoul from Nov. 4-6, 2026.

The redesigned heat dissipation device combines carbon fiber prepreg with layers of graphite. Source (All Images) | Mitsubishi 

Non-terrestrial network (NTN) antennas connect smart devices or drones to satellites, and can be placed in fixed locations like rooftops or, increasingly, mobile ones such as vehicles, marine vessels or aircraft. The high-power electronics required to operate the system necessitate high levels of heat dissipation performance to protect the overall antenna, conventionally achieved with an aluminum heat dissipation device that conducts heat safely away from the structure. However, the desire for increasingly mobile and movable antennas creates a need for the overall structure to be as lightweight as possible, including the heat dissipation device.

In July 2025, four Tokyo, Japan-based companies started a collaboration to target this challenge: Mitsubishi Chemical Corp., the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), electronics company Sharp Corp. and engineering and manufacturing company Techlab Co. Ltd.

The goal was “to jointly develop ultra-compact, lightweight satellite communication terminals for mobility applications, and address the excessive weight and thermal management limitations of the conventional aluminum design,” explains Mitsubishi Chemical. The new structure also needs to maintain the antenna’s required electrical and heat dissipation performance.

First, the partners defined the thermal and weight requirements of the device to determine the optimal materials, then designed the structure. For lightweighting, the partners naturally turned to carbon fiber composites; for the thermal conductivity requirements, they settled upon graphite, commonly used for in-plane thermal conductivity in electronics but too brittle to be used on its own in a structural part.

Mitsubishi Chemical developed and supplied carbon fiber prepreg (resin for this specific demonstrator application is undisclosed, but would commonly be an epoxy) and graphite sheet materials that would be layered together, while Techlab developed the mold and process technology for forming the final part.

The heat dissipation device, also called a thermal management device, sits between the antenna and modem.

As of June 2026, the new heat dissipation device has been completed and tested, integrated into the planar antenna, and the electrical performance of the antenna has been verified and its overall operation demonstrated. After manufacturing by Techlab, Sharp integrated the completed device into the NTN planar antenna and validated the electrical and terminal-level performance.

The results? The device, which on its own weights less than 1 kilogram, is reported to reduce overall antenna weight by 47%, from 5.5 to 2.9 kilograms. This supports “the broader aim of making satellite communication terminals practical for installation on drones, vehicles and other mobility platforms,” Mitsubishi Chemical says.

Regarding its thermal conductivity performance, the company adds, that testing showed no meaningful degradation in antenna performance compared to the conventional aluminum design. Radiation pattern differences remained within measurement error, and receive-gain characteristics were unchanged. The team also confirmed operation of the antenna with a model as a complete satellite communication terminal, demonstrating that the lighter system can fit within the payload capacity limits of commonly used industrial drones and can be mounted on vehicles and other mobility platforms.

The project is now moving forward into further evaluation of thermal performance and mountability, along with continued prototyping and demonstrators toward practical deployment on drones, vehicles and other mobility platforms.

Clean Aviation’s new projects move technologies developed in previous research toward ground and flight testing. From top right, clockwise: PHARES, part of the Ultra-Efficient Regional Aircraft (UERA) initiative, infused wingbox at Mtorres in IIAMS project and Advanced Rear End (ARE) demonstrator at Aernnova Composites. Sources | Clean Aviation, Airbus Defence and Space, MTorres and Aernnova Composites.

The governing board of the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking (Brussels, Belgium) has approved €290 million in EU funding for 19 new projects, mobilizing €664 million in total research effort. The awards mark Clean Aviation’s move into the demonstration phase, carrying technologies developed under earlier research programs out of the lab and into full-scale ground test facilities, with the most mature candidates advancing to flight demonstration.

The projects span hybrid-electric and hydrogen propulsion architectures and systems, airframe optimization, noise reduction and anti-icing technologies — including two composites-focused efforts, ARELIS and ATHENA, aimed at advancing composite rear-fuselage/empennage and full airframe structures and a third project on lightweight liquid hydrogen storage.

List of projects in Call 4. Source | Clean Aviation

Eight projects funded under Clean Aviation’s Fast Track Areas will begin at the end of 2026, with the remaining 11 following in early 2027. Full-scale ground demonstrations and flight tests are planned for 2029-2030. Clean Aviation states the projects are intended to contribute to a reduction of net greenhouse gas emissions from short-medium range (SMR) and regional aircraft of at least 30% compared with 2020 state-of-the-art technology, laying groundwork toward decarbonized aircraft targeted for entry into service by 2035.

The awards follow Clean Aviation’s fourth call for proposals, in which participation by small- and medium-sized enterprises, research and technology organizations and universities nearly doubled compared with prior calls, accounting for 42% of the funding allocated. Of 185 total participating entities, 74 — nearly 40% — are new to the program, a trend Clean Aviation attributes largely to increased interest in the Fast Track Areas and new eligibility conditions for certain proposals. The expanded participant base broadens the program’s geographic and organizational reach, which supports Europe’s future aviation supply chain capacity.

Composites in the Call 4 lineup

Ultra-Efficient Rear Fuselage and Empennage

Of the 19 projects, two directly rely on composites. ARELIS, led by Airbus Operations SL (Getafe, Spain), will demonstrate an “Ultra-Efficient Rear Fuselage and Empennage and Its Integrated Industrial System” for SMR aircraft, part of a category that received €106 million in total EU funding across four projects. ARELIS succeeds the Clean Sky 2 Advanced Rear End (ARE) demonstrator, which achieved a 13% weight reduction through lightweight composite structures and a 20% recurring cost reduction at the component level using low-cost composite manufacturing methods.

CW covered the composite frame, stringer and skin work behind that predecessor project in 2021 (see “Clean Sky 2 releases project results”). ARELIS is tasked with carrying that work to a full-component assembly and industrial system capable of high-rate production ahead of the 2035 EIS target.

Ultra-Efficient Regional Aircraft (UERA)

ATHENA, led by Leonardo (Rome, Italy), will demonstrate an advanced airframe for Clean Aviation’s “Ultra-Efficient Regional Aircraft (UERA)” concept (also developed in the PHARES and HERACLES projects), part of a €40 million funding category. Clean Aviation’s topic description for the project calls for an advanced airframe — wing, fuselage, empennage and key enabling systems — for the hybrid-electric UERA concept, building on composite fuselage and outer wingbox demonstrator work that CW also reported on (see “Clean Aviation’s regional aircraft technology testbed #2 demonstrates advances with composites”).

Innovative lightweight and reliable liquid hydrogen tank

Another Call 4 project, ATLAS (Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Caserta, Italy), is developing an “innovative lightweight and reliable” liquid hydrogen tank. Composite architectures dominate parallel Clean Aviation liquid hydrogen storage work, but neither project’s published title nor materials confirm a composite construction.

From left to right: Nico Neumann, CEO Deutsche Aircraft; Dirk Panter, State Minister for Economic Affairs, Labour, Energy and Climate Protection of the Free State of Saxony; Marie-Christine von Hahn, principal managing director, German Aerospace Industries Association (BDLI); and Christian Hirte, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Transport at the official opening ceremony of Deutsche Aircraft’s FAL in Leipzig/Halle. Source | Deutsche 

On Sept. 29, Deutsche Aircraft (Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany) inaugurated its final assembly line (FAL) at Leipzig/Halle Airport for the D328eco aircraft program, which will officially transition from development to serial production. Representing an investment of more than €100 million, the 60,500-square-meter facility has been designed for an annual production capacity of up to 48 aircraft, complete with the FAL, flight readiness hangar, logistics center and administration building.

The opening also represents the return of aircraft manufacturing to Saxony for the first time in more than 60 years, bringing together German engineering excellence, Saxony’s industrial expertise and Leipzig’s international connectivity in a single production hub.

Beyond supporting the D328eco program — supported by composites suppliers including Aernnova (Álava, Spain) and Hexcel (Stamford, Conn., U.S.) — the FAL strengthens Germany’s ability to design, certify, test, manufacture and support complete aircraft. Deutsche Aircraft’s integrated operations across Oberpfaffenhofen and Leipzig create an end-to-end aerospace capability in the country, spanning engineering, certification, flight testing, industrialization, final assembly and customer delivery.

Designed as a modern, digital and sustainability-focused production environment, the facility incorporates advanced manufacturing technologies, automated logistics systems and paperless production processes to increase efficiency, quality and transparency throughout aircraft assembly. Energy-efficient infrastructure, including photovoltaic systems and heat pump technology, reflect Deutsche Aircraft’s commitment to sustainable industrial growth.

Expected to create approximately 250 new direct jobs as production ramps up over the coming years, the Leipzig FAL will support skilled employment throughout the aerospace supply chain. Beyond direct employment, the program will create opportunities for apprentices, technicians, engineers and manufacturing specialists.

Leipzig will serve as the company’s center for aircraft assembly, flight-readiness activities and global customer deliveries, while Oberpfaffenhofen remains the home of engineering, flight testing and certification activities.

Omnidea overtaping in robot cell. Source | DLR

The DLR Institute of Structures and Design (Stuttgart and Augsburg, Germany) and Omnidea-RTG GmbH (Stuhr, Germany) have developed a Type 5 liquified natural gas (LNG) tank demonstrator made from carbon fiber-reinforced low-melt PAEK (Victrex, LMPAEK) and manufactured using an in situ automated fiber placement (AFP) process. The 1-meter-diameter tank was built as part of a research project funded by the European Space Agency (ESA, Paris, France) at DLR’s Center for Lightweight Production Technology (ZLP) site in Augsburg, and was developed to advance lightweight, high-strength storage systems for cryogenic fuels such as hydrogen and methane.

DLR reports that both tank halves and their joining were manufactured using the same thermoplastic in situ AFP technology, allowing the complete tank structure to be produced in a single, continuous process chain without separate joining operations or specialized molds. The development chain covered structural design of the tank system, material selection, permeability analyses to confirm leak-tightness under cryogenic conditions and mechanical characterization of the joints.

This integrated manufacturing approach can help reduce production costs and manufacturing complexity by eliminating separate joining processes and dedicated tooling, while making more efficient use of existing manufacturing infrastructure.

DLR and Omnidea-RTG present the demonstrator as evidence of the technological maturity and industrial feasibility of thermoplastic AFP for cryogenic storage systems, pointing to potential applications in future space missions and terrestrial uses.

More information on the project is available on DLR’s project page and LinkedIn.

Major international carriers such as Air France-KLM are currently employing drones, such as the Iris CMX shown here, for regular exterior surface coating maintenance scanning. Source | AkzoNobel

The visual inspection of an aircraft’s exterior, including the fuselage, wings, engines, landing gear and control surfaces such as ailerons, rudders and elevators, is part of any air carrier’s regular maintenance protocol. And while you might not think it, it is also one of the most arduously time-consuming procedures and open to potential error.

For the most part, exterior visual inspections are done by a human worker armed often with little more than a flashlight or handheld gauge. Cracks, corrosion and deformations are usually not difficult to spy; however, when it comes to assessing dry film thickness, color or gloss measurements, the margin of error is wider. Moreover, the physical limitations of human inspection present significant positioning accuracy and line-of-sight challenges. Human inspectors struggle to accurately gauge areas such as the inside of wheel wells, darker, more confined spaces like engine cowlings and pylons, and the upper fuselage and wing tips, where micro-cracking and corrosion may go unchecked.

Recently, however, drones and robots are coming to the forefront of nondestructive testing capabilities, and AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings (Waukegan, Illinois) has aimed to lead the way.

Leveraging data

In 2023, AkzoNobel introduced its Aerofleet Coatings Management service (ACMS), a data-driven coatings optimization platform developed in partnership with drone manufacturer Donecle (Toulouse, France). The ACMS combines flight and environmental data, such as UV exposure, humidity and route profiles, with visual- and contact-based measurement data. It was devised to empower airlines’ maintenance and repainting protocols, offering them full-service visual analysis via a wide range of high-resolution imaging married to a digital management system that analyzes that imagery to identify any issues or wear in an aircraft’s surface coating.

In 2023, AkzoNobel launched its Aerofleet Coatings Management system with the Iris GVI inspection drone, developed in partnership with Donecle.
Source | AkzoNobel

At launch, the ACMS employed a drone — the Iris GVI — to capture and relay the imagery to the analyzer. More recently, AkzoNobel has expanded its drone-based capability with the Iris CMX, which brings a third component to the ACMS system: targeted, high-precision measurement. Taken altogether, combined data input provides a complete picture of an aircraft’s current coating condition, while also forecasting future maintenance requirements.

“Localized degradation is identified through the visual- and contact-based measurement data,” AkzoNobel global aerospace commercial director Ted Rhee tells PF. “This can enable potential issues to be identified earlier, when more targeted touch-up coating repairs may still be sufficient. The flight and environmental data help establish whether the coating is aging as expected and identifies outliers within the fleet that may require additional attention. It also helps forecast how coating conditions are likely to evolve over time, supporting airlines in predicting more accurate repainting timelines.”

Greater contact and control

The contact-based Iris CMX sensor drone is a forward-mounted arm embedded with three contact-based sensors. Because the arm is rotatable, the sensors are able to make contact with the surface at all angles — whether it is a vertical or horizontal surface, whether from above or below.

“The drone is over-actuated, meaning it has extra propellers that can provide thrust in all directions,” Rhee explains. “Combined with the rotating arm, the drone can push and maintain the payload of the sensors against the painted surface. It uses laser navigation and a pre-defined program for each aircraft’s livery, indicating where and how to measure. All measurements are done simultaneously.”

The Iris CMX drone provides a full-surface contact measurement of an aircraft’s exterior coating.
Source | AkzoNobel

The two-drone system — Iris GVI and CMX — can complete a narrowbody aircraft inspection (e.g., Airbus A319/A320 family aircraft, or the Boeing 737) in about 30 minutes, a significant time savings from the five to eight hours a typical visual inspection requires.

“Of course, the biggest savings will come from extending the interval between full repaints,” Rhee says. “The inspection process can help identify minor coating issues at an earlier stage, allowing targeted repairs to be carried out before they develop into more significant areas of degradation. These repairs can maintain coating condition and extend the time between full repaints. In the longer term, we estimate that airlines could save between 10% and 20% on annual repainting and aircraft out-of-service costs.”

AkzoNobel teams with TAP Air Portugal for basecoat trial

 

Source | AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings/TAP Air Portugal

TAP Air Portugal, the largest commercial carrier in South America with a fleet of around 106 aircraft, partnered with AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings to successfully trial a lighter basecoat technology on one of TAP’s Airbus A320s.

Using AkzoNobel’s Aerobase UPD formulation in a single coat, the trial showed a 36% basecoat film thickness reduction over a traditional two-coat process, which translates to an overall weight savings of 53 pounds. A cross-coat application technique enables the required hiding power and finish quality to be achieved via a single basecoat application cycle, eliminating the need for a second full basecoat layer and associated flash-off stages.

The company projects that if this lighter coating were applied to TAP’s entire fleet, the cumulative fuel savings resulting from a drop in weight per aircraft would be approximately 428.5 tonnes, equivalent to €500,000 in fuel cost and 1,353 tonnes of CO₂ emissions.

Of the test trail, AkzoNobel Aerospace Coatings segment manager for OEM, MRO and airlines Aurore Bournazel says, “This program demonstrates how incremental innovations in coatings technology can deliver measurable operational benefits and emissions savings for airlines. By reducing total film build and simplifying the application process, Aerobase UPD helps operators lower aircraft weight, improve paint shop productivity and maintain the high-quality finish standards required across commercial aviation fleets. The aviation industry is focused on identifying practical opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce emissions, and coatings technology can play an important role in supporting those wider sustainability ambitions.”

Sustainability and CO₂ emission reduction are two of the global air transportation industry’s key markers as it moves toward its 2050 goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions. The UPD formulation is now being applied and trialed on a second TAP A320, and a fleet-wide rollout is currently in the planning stages.

The shop impact

AkzoNobel has positioned Aerofleet as “ideally suited for fleets of 100 aircraft or more,” which suggests a barrier to entry for smaller carriers or independent maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) providers.

“There is both a cost and data element here,” Rhee admits, but he sees both barriers as relatively short term. “The larger the fleet, the faster the return on investment with little or no need to change the repainting procurement. Indeed, with high throughput, it is easier to first optimize the order in which aircraft are painted and then reduce the number of full repaints. On the data side, the ACMS AI models are still being fine-tuned. Larger fleets simply enable faster convergence. As the models and the industry gain experience, these barriers to entry will decline.”

Regardless of air carrier or coatings shop size, however, the addition of the Iris CMX to the ACMS platform does offer additional benefits, including fleshed-out work orders and spec sheets that are generated automatically and shared with the airline customer, who can then present them to their coating shop partner, eliminating guesswork associated with the job spec. The fleet data generated by the ACMS is also informing necessary or recommended reformulation of coatings themselves.

“The potential for ACMS in this area comes from the digitization of inspection data that our customers will have,” Rhee says. “As these datasets grow, they [will] reveal meaningful performance patterns across different operating conditions. Our most recent reformulation work has focused on balancing performance, process control and weight to support customers’ operational sustainability goals. An update to our Aerobase basecoat is one example where formulation and application improvements have improved film-build control and repeatability, helping achieve the required finish with lower coating weight.”

The Iris CMX drone can access areas of an aircraft difficult for a handheld gauge, such as the contours of parts that move freely, such as ailerons, rudders and elevators. Source | AkzoNobel

Further developments

AkzoNobel and partner Donecle are continuing their ongoing collaborative efforts toward further expanding the ACMS and its capabilities. “We’re collaborating on the development of predictive AI models,” Rhee says. “And importantly, this technology is not limited to aircraft using AkzoNobel coatings. It can also be made available to airlines and third-party MRO providers operating aircraft that use other coating systems, or a combination of AkzoNobel and other coatings.”

Looking beyond commercial aviation, Rhee also sees a drone-based, quantitative inspection approach migrating to other coated-metal and coated-plastic sectors where large painted surfaces are similarly hard to inspect manually and repainting decisions are costly: “While the current focus is on aerospace, the drones and technology could migrate to other sectors including marine and wind power assets.”

For the time being, with air carriers such as Air France-KLM, Avianca and LATAM Airlines Group already employing drone technology in their surface inspection protocols — and U.S. majors such as Delta Air Lines poised to begin — the sky is really no limit at all.

Electroless nickel’s (EN) combination of corrosion resistance, wear performance, conductivity, uniform deposition and substrate versatility positions it as an enabling surface technology for next-generation aerospace systems. Source | Adobe Stock

Design in aerospace has always required a balance between weight, performance, reliability and cost. Today, that balance is becoming increasingly complex as aircraft developers pursue higher levels of electrification, expand the use of advanced composites and engineered polymer materials — which in turn is leading to new manufacturing method exploration — and integrate sophisticated electronic systems.¹ It is this shift in priority toward lightweight, efficient components that do more, but still perform reliably in highly demanding environments, that is creating new challenges for aerospace engineers.

This shift inherently reshapes expectations for surface finishing. A coating may be required to protect against corrosion while simultaneously providing wear resistance, electrical conductivity, electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding or dimensional consistency. But as substrates and component geometries become more complex, the coating system must also be compatible with materials and designs that did not traditionally require the use of surface finishing technologies.

Electroless nickel (EN) offers a solution to these challenges, as its properties address a range of engineering demands. Beyond functioning as a corrosion-resistant finish, EN can also serve as an engineered functional layer that contributes to overall component performance. Its combination of uniform deposition, corrosion resistance, hardness, conductivity and substrate versatility makes it particularly relevant as aerospace designs continue to evolve.

Shifting aerospace design priorities

Aircraft electrification is one example of how aerospace design priorities are changing. NASA is one of many organizations actively researching electrified aircraft propulsion technologies intended to make commercial aviation more efficient, including all-electric, hybrid-electric and turbo-electric configurations. In July 2026, it reported that a megawatt-class hybrid-electric engine developed with GE Aerospace had flown on a modified Saab 340B, including test flights above 30,000 feet.² 

As aircraft become more electrified, new demands typically turn first to basic architecture, since motors, generators, power electronics and other electrical components take on a greater role within increasingly integrated systems. In hybrid-electric propulsion systems, for example, electrical machines can supply additional thrust or extract power from turbine engines, but considerations such as conductivity, shielding, corrosion protection, and thermal and environmental durability become increasingly important.

Lightweighting is another ongoing design priority. Advanced composite materials enable aerospace engineers to combine low weight with high strength and other tailored properties. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) notes that composites are used in critical aviation applications and can provide lighter weight, along with strength, corrosion resistance and heat resistance, compared with traditional materials. The agency also identifies potential maintenance benefits associated with advanced composites, including longer service intervals in appropriate applications.³

This transition does not mean metals are disappearing. Instead, aerospace manufacturers are increasingly working with a combination of aluminum, steels, composites, engineered thermoplastics and other advanced materials. The result is a more complicated surface engineering environment in which the finish must be selected as part of the overall component system.

Functional coatings are becoming engineered performance systems

Historically, a finish might be discussed primarily in terms of a single characteristic, such as corrosion resistance. Today, however, the demands on aerospace components require a more complex and versatile range of performance qualities. A functional coating may need to protect the underlying substrate from corrosion, withstand abrasion, maintain electrical conductivity, contribute to EMI shielding and remain consistent across intricate geometries. It may also need to perform reliably through temperature changes and mechanical stresses encountered during service.

EN is particularly useful in this context because its properties extend beyond corrosion protection alone.

Unlike conventional electrolytic nickel plating, EN is an autocatalytic chemical deposition process. Its deposition mechanism does not depend on external electrical current distribution across the component, allowing the process to produce a comparatively uniform coating on complex geometries, including recesses, cavities and irregular surfaces.

That characteristic becomes increasingly valuable as component design becomes more sophisticated. When a coating is performing an engineering function, thickness distribution is not merely cosmetic. Variations in thickness can affect dimensions and ultimately component performance. Uniform deposition, therefore, gives designers another tool for applying a functional metallic surface to increasingly complicated components.

Why EN continues to matter

Not all EN deposits are created equal. The phosphorus content of the nickel-phosphorus alloy influences the properties of the resulting coating and allows the process to be tailored toward particular performance requirements.

High-phosphorus EN deposits, for example, are widely used where corrosion resistance is a primary consideration. As phosphorus content increases, the deposit develops a more amorphous structure with fewer grain boundaries that can provide pathways for corrosive attack.

Mid-phosphorus EN deposits provide a different balance of characteristics and are used extensively in aerospace applications where corrosion protection, hardness and electrical properties must be considered together.

Low-phosphorus EN deposits demonstrate the highest as-plated hardness which provides very robust wear resistance, especially under abrasive wear conditions, while maintaining good electrical conductivity.

EN is also useful for a variety of aerospace substrates. Steel and aluminum are established examples, while appropriate surface preparation makes it possible to metallize engineering plastics and composite materials as well.

This flexibility becomes increasingly relevant as aerospace moves toward mixed-material designs. The question is no longer, “What coating protects this metal?” It is increasingly, “What surface system delivers the required functionality on the substrate selected for this component?”

EN plays an important role in enabling plastic or composite aerospace connector assemblies to meet a range of requirements including lightning strike protection, electrical conductivity and shielding performance. Source | MacDermid Enthone Industrial Solutions

Advanced materials are changing the finishing process

The expansion of engineered polymers and composites creates opportunities for aerospace designers, but it also introduces new finishing challenges.

Materials such as polyetheretherketone (PEEK), polyetherimide (PEI) and polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) provide useful combinations of mechanical and thermal performance and support molding and additive manufacturing processes. However, achieving reliable adhesion of metallic coatings to these materials is often more challenging than with traditional substrates.

For nonconductive polymers, proper surface preparation and activation are essential to establishing a strong bond with subsequent metallic layers. The quality of this interface directly influences the durability and performance of the finished coating system.

The aerospace and surface finishing industries alike are also evaluating how these processes meet environmental and regulatory objectives. Traditional plastic pretreatment has included hexavalent chromium-based etching. Chrome-free alternatives are now available that can prepare both traditional and engineered plastics for subsequent metallization.

The key to finishing these new material developments goes beyond one chemistry in isolation, however. Instead, it is the emergence of complete surface engineering systems in which pretreatment, adhesion, metallization and final functional coatings are designed to work together.

Aerospace connectors point to a broader trend

Aerospace electrical connectors provide a useful example of this complete systems approach. MIL-DTL-38999 connectors are used in commercial and military aerospace applications where electrical continuity, environmental protection and EMI shielding are critical. On traditional aluminum connectors, EN serves as an intermediate or final finish that provides corrosion protection and preserves conductive performance.

The performance requirements for these components are demanding. MIL-DTL-38999 connector assemblies have stringent electrical continuity and contact resistance requirements for specified plated finishes. Meanwhile, connector systems designed for lightning strike environments must maintain structural integrity, electrical conductivity and shielding performance under severe transient electrical loads.

The move from aluminum to nonconductive engineered polymers demonstrates how the role of the coating system changes with the substrate. A plastic or composite connector does not inherently provide the electrical conductivity of an aluminum connector. Applying a copper metallization layer, however, will help establish this needed electrical conductivity. EN can then protect that copper layer from corrosion and preserve conductive continuity. In these instances, mid-phosphorus EN is commonly used for its higher nickel content, which provides slightly better conductive properties than its high-phosphorus counterpart.

Connectors, therefore, provide a useful model for what is happening more broadly in aerospace finishing. The substrate is changing, but performance requirements remain. The coating system becomes the bridge between a lightweight material choice and the electrical, environmental and mechanical properties required from the finished component.

Finishing as an enabling technology

Next-generation aerospace platforms will continue to place new demands on advanced materials (e.g., certification and structural performance, manufacturing technologies, bonded joints, maintenance procedures), lightweighting, electrification and other efficiencies. Research into electrified propulsion and autonomous systems illustrates the increasing complexity of future aircraft, with technologies spanning advanced power systems, AI, flight controls, collision avoidance, automated navigation and sensing technologies.⁴

For finishers, these developments create an important opportunity. New materials and manufacturing technologies do not eliminate the need for surface engineering. In many cases, they increase it and demand innovation. A lightweight polymer component may still need a conductive surface. An electronic housing may still require EMI shielding and corrosion protection. A complex component may require tightly controlled coating thickness. A wear surface must still survive repeated and prolonged mechanical contact. All of these requirements must be delivered reliably and repeatably within an aerospace manufacturing environment.

That is where EN’s future becomes particularly interesting. Its value increasingly lies in the ability to combine multiple functions within a carefully engineered coating system and to apply those functions across an expanding range of substrates and component designs. It is this well-established characteristic that will make it advantageous as the applications surrounding continue to evolve.

References

¹Federal Aviation Administration. (2026, April 9). “Technical discipline: Advance composite materials.” U.S. Department of Transportation. https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/step/disciplines/advanced_composite_materials

²Margetta, R. (2026, July 20). “NASA, GE Aerospace work enables hybrid-electric flight demonstration.” National Aeronautics and Space Administration. https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/rtmd/nasa-ge-hybrid-electric-flight/

³National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (n.d.). Electrified aircraft propulsion. https://www.nasa.gov/mission/eap/

⁴National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (2021, December 7). Autonomous systems. Armstrong Flight Research Center. https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/autonomous-systems/

About the Author

Ambrose Schaffer

aAmbrose Schaffer is the global product line manager, wear resistant coatings for North America, for MacDermid Enthone Industrial Solutions. Contact: macdermidenthone.com/

Two employees inspect a component. Source | FACC/Djanjesic

With the opening of its plant expansion in Jakovlje, Croatia, FACC (Ried im Innkreis, Austria) is further expanding its international manufacturing network, thereby increasing manufacturing capacity to meet the aviation industry’s anticipated future growth. A total of £36 million was invested in the facility.

The international aviation industry is preparing for significantly higher production rates in the years to come. FACC cites 18,700 firm aircraft orders and a near doubling of the global fleet from 23,210 to 45,550 aircraft by 2045. As a partner to all major manufacturers, FACC is thus continuing to expand its production capacity. With the plant expansion in Croatia expansion, the aerospace company has tripled its Jakovlje site production area; the site has already grown to more than 500 employees, making it FACC’s largest production facility outside of Austria.

Read “Plant Tour: FACC AG, Jakovlje, Croatia”

“In 2022, we announced that we would significantly expand our production area and capacity at our site in Croatia and grow our workforce from 160 to over 500 employees. We’ve delivered — and we’re far from done,” emphasizes FACC CEO Robert Machtlinger.

Technological advancements at the Croatian site are already underway. The plant already features a fully automated paint shop and the next plan is to launch press production for composite components. The site is known for its global production of high-end cabin interiors.

By 2030, FACC will invest approximately £350 million in new technologies and the expansion of its global locations. This will enable both higher production rates for existing programs and new customer projects, while further increasing efficiency throughout the company. This strategy is also being pursued through plant expansion in Upper Austria, which will double the capacity for structural components at FACC’s St. Martin site.

Source | GE Aerospace

GE Aerospace (Evendale, Ohio, U.S.) continues to advance toward assembly of the XA102 adaptive cycle engine under the U.S. Air Force’s Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) program, the company announced Sept. 14. The three-stream adaptive cycle engine’s hot section incorporates ceramic matrix composites (CMC) to enable higher turbine temperatures versus metal alloys.

“Our team is working with suppliers to procure hardware and test subcomponents as we prepare for assembly of the first XA102 test asset,” says Jorge Perez, general manager of Edison Works Advanced Combat Engines at GE Aerospace. “With our learnings from the XA100 program as a foundation, we are well positioned to advance adaptive cycle engine technology and support the Air Force’s vision for next-generation propulsion.”

The XA102 was designed from the outset using model-based engineering (MBE) practices with the goal of reducing development time and cost. The company is now extending those model-based capabilities into manufacturing, inspection and assembly, centered on model-based definition (MBD) which conveys complete product definition in machine-readable form for use in downstream manufacturing. The XA102 is the first engine GE Aerospace has built using MBD from design through assembly, replacing traditional 2D drawings with a framework that connects design, manufacturing and inspection through integrated digital models.

GE Aerospace says it is working closely with suppliers to ensure they can use the MBD data in their own manufacturing and inspection processes, and that the approach is intended to strengthen execution across the supply base. Building on experience from the XA100 program, the company is applying lessons learned in adaptive cycle propulsion, thermal management, fuel efficiency and design methods to mature the XA102 ahead of future testing. GE Aerospace reports it has completed demonstrations tied to the MBE practices in the program’s first phase.

CMC in the XA102’s hot section

Beyond the digital engineering focus of this announcement, GE Aerospace has said separately that the XA102’s adaptive cycle design uses new heat-resistant materials, including CMC, to enable higher turbine temperatures and improved performance. The CMC GE has already commercialized is made of silicon carbide ceramic fibers reinforcing a ceramic resin. Roughly one-third the density of nickel alloys, they enable engine designs to divert less cooling air from the flow path and run engines more efficiently at higher thrust.

The XA102’s use of CMC builds on more than a decade of GE Aerospace flight validation work. In 2015, GE ran its first non-static set of CMC parts — rotating low-pressure turbine blades — in an F414 demonstrator engine developed for the Adaptive Engine Technology Demonstrator program with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL, Dayton, Ohio, U.S.). The test endured 500 cycles and marked the material’s move beyond static components, such as turbine shrouds, into the higher-stress rotating sections of the engine. Since beginning CMC development in the early 1990s, GE Aerospace has invested more than $1 billion in the technology. In 2025, it announced further funding of more than $100 million to scale advanced materials, including CMC with major upgrades in its CMC production facilities.

CMC components are already established in GE Aerospace’s commercial engine fleet. CMC turbine shrouds have surpassed 10 million flight hours in the CFM LEAP engine, with more than 100,000 shrouds produced at a dedicated facility in Asheville, North Carolina. The GE9X, GE Aerospace’s largest commercial engine, uses five different CMC parts in its hot section, including components in the combustor and high-pressure turbine.

Source | Gilmour Space Technologies

Queensland-based aerospace companies Gilmour Space Technologies (Australia) and Hypersonix Launch Systems (Brisbane, Australia) have signed an agreement to develop hypersonic flight-test capability for defense and commercial programs in Australia and overseas.

The partnership brings together Gilmour Space’s rocket propulsion, launch, mission integration and flight-test capabilities with Hypersonix’s scramjet propulsion and hypersonic vehicle technology. 

Both companies have composites experience. Hypersonix’s scramjet vehicles use ceramic matrix composite (CMC) components. In July, it helped advance CMC parts capable of withstanding temperatures beyond Mach 5. Gilmour Space is known for its use of carbon fiber on platforms like the Eris 1 rocket and other launch-related systems. This is important, as growing demand for hypersonic testing is being driven by the development of systems and enabling technologies including advanced sensors, communications, guidance systems and high-temperature materials.

Gilmour Space co-founder and CEO Adam Gilmour, says the agreement could give customers more options to develop, test and demonstrate advanced technologies at a greater frequency. “Australia is developing serious expertise in rockets, scramjets and hypersonic flight. The next step is connecting those technologies and giving them a pathway through demonstration and into use,” he explains. “By bringing together our complementary strengths, we can support a broader range of applications, while building sovereign capability that makes Australia a stronger and more valuable partner.”

Hypersonix CEO Matt Hill adds that the partnership could help meet growing international demand for hypersonic test and evaluation and support the development of Australia’s operational capabilities. “Defense customers need more frequent, responsive and accessible ways to test technologies in representative hypersonic conditions,” he says. “Working with Gilmour Space will help us meet this need at pace and scale, while exploring new solutions for Australian and allied programs, including under AUKUS Pillar II.”

Gilmour Space and Hypersonix are portfolio companies of the National Reconstruction Fund Corp.

Source | Hexcel Corp. 

Hexcel Corp. (Stamford, Conn., U.S.) is expanding its Salt Lake City facility capacity, which manufactures the company’s HexPly M901 prepreg. The addition responds to manufacturers’ need for composite materials that support shorter production cycles and higher volumes while delivering the mechanical and elevated-temperature performance required for structural applications.

“Manufacturers should not have to choose between structural performance and production efficiency,” says Imad Atallah, vice president, commercial growth and fibers, matrix, and reinforcements product management, Hexcel. “M901 gives customers a versatile material platform that supports faster manufacturing and provides a practical path to higher-volume production as their programs grow. Bringing production to Salt Lake City also places this capability closer to customers across the Americas.”

Originally developed Duxford, U.K., and currently manufactured in Dagneux, France, M901 will expand Hexcel’s U.S. aerospace and industrial composites portfolio and provide domestic customers with local access to a proven, fast-curing prepreg system. 

M901 offers cure cycles as short as 4-5 minutes and glass transition temperature performance up to 180°C, depending on cure and post-cure conditions. The system is compatible with autoclave and press curing, hot-in/hot-out processing and compression molding. It also provides up to 15 weeks of out-life at room temperature and is suitable for thick-section components.

M901 is suited for autonomous airframes and defense systems, automotive structures, medical devices and other industrial applications in which lightweight structural performance must be balanced with production speed, scalability and cost.

Source | Hexcel Corp.

Hexcel Corp. (Stamford, Conn., U.S.) has successfully qualified its HexWeb HRH-10 aerospace honeycomb through the National Center for Advanced Materials Performance (NCAMP), administered by Wichita State University’s National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR, Wichita, Kan., U.S.). The qualification establishes what Hexcel deems the “aerospace industry’s first NCAMP database for honeycomb core materials,” providing engineers with design-ready material data to streamline structural design, reduce qualification costs and accelerate the adoption of advanced composite structures.

“As aerospace manufacturers work to bring increasingly advanced aircraft, launch vehicles and other aerospace platforms to market, access to trusted engineering data is becoming as important as access to the materials themselves,” says Lyndon Smith, president, Americas and global fibers, Hexcel. “This qualification reflects Hexcel’s commitment to making advanced composites more accessible and accelerating innovation across the aerospace ecosystem.”

Hexcel highlights this new development, plus others at CAMX 2026. 

The qualification extends the proven NCAMP approach beyond composite prepreg systems and makes publicly available engineering data accessible for a widely used aerospace honeycomb material. Hexcel’s HRH-10 honeycomb was selected as the baseline material for the collaborative industry effort to establish a common qualification framework for honeycomb core materials.

The publicly available NCAMP database provides engineers with trusted material data and a common material specification that can be used to support structural design and development. By leveraging a shared qualification database, organizations can reduce the time, cost and effort associated with generating qualification data independently while gaining greater confidence in material selection and structural analysis. The qualification effort also generated additional engineering data to support the design of lightweight honeycomb structures across a range of aerospace applications. The HexWeb HRH-10 qualification database will be available through NCAMP resources published by NIAR.

As a vertically integrated supplier of advanced composites, Hexcel provides customers with a broad portfolio of aerospace materials, including carbon fiber, prepregs, honeycomb core and engineered composite structures. 

Source | Hexcel Corp.

An enhanced HexWeb CRPAA-5052-F80-12.0 Vented Flex-Core aluminum honeycomb by Hexcel Corp. (Stamford, Conn., U.S.) has been engineered to simplify complex composite structure production and still meet the demanding performance requirements of modern space launch systems and aerospace applications.

Traditional heavy-density honeycomb cores often require extensive machining and splicing to create highly contoured composite structures. Hexcel’s 12.0 lb/ft³ Vented Flex-Core reduces those challenges through a distinctive cell architecture that offers greater flexibility and formability than conventional hexagonal honeycomb. The material can reduce or eliminate machining, minimize splicing requirements and lower overall manufacturing costs while enabling larger and more complex structures, the company highlights.

Manufactured from 5052 aluminum alloy and protected by Hexcel’s phosphoric acid anodized (PAA) corrosion-resistant coating, the material is capable of service temperatures up to 177°C. A key innovation is its integrated venting capability, which helps composite sandwich structures manage pressure differentials and outgassing requirements encountered during ascent and other demanding aerospace environments.

Beyond launch vehicle applications, the material is also well suited for high-temperature aerospace structures, including engine nacelles, where increasingly complex geometries and elevated operating temperatures continue to drive demand for advanced lightweight materials.

Available in vented and non-vented configurations, the HexWeb CRPAA-5052-F80-12.0 Flex-Core expands Hexcel’s portfolio of honeycomb solutions for space, aerospace and other demanding composite applications.

Source | Honda Aircraft Co.

Honda Aircraft Co. (Greensboro, N.C., U.S.) has completed its first wing structure for the HondaJet Echelon test unit — an aircraft incorporating the company’s Over the Wing Engine Mount, a composite fuselage and advanced avionics — advancing the program toward mainline final assembly.

The HondaJet Echelon will feature a larger cabin with increased passenger capacity compared to the current HA-420 and is designed to become a single-pilot, certified light jet capable of U.S. transcontinental range. 

The program is targeting first flight in 2028 and type certification and first delivery in 2031. The updated timeline reflects Tier 1 supplier-related schedule adjustments and ongoing development activities, ensuring the aircraft meets the highest standards of quality and performance.

Structural testing activities have advanced with key component tests complete. System integration efforts continue through Honda Aircraft’s Integrated Test Facility, where a fully operational cockpit test environment is supporting active integration campaigns, and a second cockpit is being commissioned to evaluate key aircraft systems prior to the test aircraft taking flight. Manufacturing activities have also accelerated, with more than 70% of parts required for first assembly now on hand and more than 88,400 square feet now provisioned for manufacturing the Echelon.

“The HondaJet Echelon continues to take shape through the dedication and expertise of our associates and numerous OEM supplier partners,” says Amod Kelkar, senior vice president, chief commercial officer and HondaJet Echelon program leader at Honda Aircraft Co. “Completion of the first wing assembly represents an important achievement as we continue advancing testing, systems integration and equipment qualification activity across the program. In spite of some schedule challenges, with steady progress towards the final assembly, we are committed to delivering an aircraft that will redefine light jet performance, efficiency and capability.”

The HondaJet Echelon is planned to incorporate foundational technologies. Features like auto throttle, emergency autoland, autobrake, runway overrun awareness and alerting system (ROAAS), and the advanced steering augmentation system (ASAS) will offer a combination of size, range, safety, productivity, comfort and fuel efficiency.

Source | Getty Images

Welcome to the October 2026 issue of Products Finishing. Each October issue we place an emphasis on the aerospace market. This is because every gain the aerospace industry has made over the last few decades — hotter-running, more fuel-efficient engines, lighter airframes, longer intervals between maintenance events and better safety margins — have been intertwined with advances in surface engineering. Thermal barrier coatings enable turbine sections to run closer to the melting point of their base alloys, helping engines reach peak efficiency. Corrosion- and wear-resistant plating allow designers to specify lighter alloys and composites in places that used to require heavier, more corrosion-tolerant metals. And increasingly, coatings are being asked to do more than just protect a surface. They also play roles in conducting electricity, shielding against electromagnetic interference and, in some cases, even incorporate smart technology that enables health monitoring of materials and structures.

Together, this issue’s three feature stories work together to paint a picture about the importance of aerospace finishing, and also where it is headed.

Our cover story takes you inside Rolls-Royce’s work to resolve durability problems that plagued its Trent 1000 aircraft engines early in the program’s life. As senior editor Brian Budzynski reports in “HPT Engine Blade Coatings Drive Rolls-Royce Rebound,” the fix wasn’t a single material swap. Instead, it was a redesigned high-pressure turbine blade paired with new thermal barrier and bond coat systems that deliver 40% more cooling and have more than doubled time on wing. Rolls-Royce is now turning to phase two of that effort, which involves optimizing its electron beam physical vapor deposition process and developing CMAS-resistant ceramic coatings for the high-dust routes that caused some of its original issues. The story is a useful reminder that in aerospace the coating is part of the engineering process. Blade geometry, cooling architecture and coating chemistry all have to be carefully considered during the development of the resulting part.

Meanwhile, a feature article contributed by MacDermid Enthone Industrial Solutions examines the role of electroless nickel (EN) in next-generation aerospace applications. EN has long been valued in aerospace for the uniform, chemistry-driven deposits it produces on complex geometries. Now, the technology is being used for a growing range of substrates and functions. As airframers use increasing amounts of composites and engineered polymers in structures, and as electrified propulsion programs put new demands on conductivity and EMI shielding, EN is evolving from just a corrosion- and wear-resistant coating into a multifunctional engineered layer that is used to enable various applications.

Finally, a feature on AkzoNobel’s drone-based inspection system, developed with Donecle, explores the complete life cycle for aerospace coatings. The company’s Iris CMX sensor can inspect a narrowbody aircraft in roughly 30 minutes, compared with five to eight hours for a manual walkaround, and the resulting data aids airlines in assessing and prioritizing repairs. Paired with lighter basecoat formulations, the combination of better inspection data and lighter coatings contributes to fuel savings.

Taken together, these stories verify that coatings are not just a finishing touch on an aircraft, they’re enabling technologies, and the aerospace industry’s ability to keep pushing performance, weight and cost in the right direction depends in part on continued innovation in coatings formulation, application and verification.

But that is not all that this October issue has to offer. Readers will also find an On the Line interview with newly appointed ChemQuest CEO Robert Lovegrove on key trends and innovations in the industry, as well as our ongoing Ask the Expert clinic series exploring the following topics:

• Why geometry, soil type and equipment matter as much as chemistry when troubleshooting aqueous cleaning.
• How anodizing quality, rinsing and seal conditions cause surface deposits, and how to troubleshoot the root cause.
• Strategies for course correcting declining bath heat transfer.
• How electrostatic applications can reduce waste and help lower overall finishing costs.

I hope you enjoy the issue!

Source | IFW

The HPCFK research collaboration (Stade, Germany) is expanding its research infrastructure at the CFK NORD site in Stade, Germany, through a new project called RE:LIGHT — REcyclable LIGHTweight Technologies. As highlighted on LinkedIn, the project will focus on circular lightweight materials and resource-efficient manufacturing, laser-based manufacturing, joining and separation technologies for fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites, as well as cognitive and humanoid robotics for flexible production and recycling.

HPCFK unites three German university institutes based at CFK NORD: the Institute of Production Engineering and Machine Tools (IFW) at Leibniz University Hannover (Garbsen), the Institute of Aircraft Design and Lightweight Structures (IFL) at the Technical University of Braunschweig and the Institute of Polymer Materials and Plastics Engineering (PuK) at the Technical University of Clausthal (Clausthal-Zellerfeld). According to IFW’s project page, RE:LIGHT runs from July 2026 through December 2028 and is funded by Lower Saxony’s Ministry of Science and Culture and NBank, drawing on European Regional Development Fund resources under the EU’s Platform for Strategic Technologies for Europe.

The project responds to pressure on aircraft manufacturers to produce lightweight structures more sustainably and economically, even as demand grows for greater production flexibility and part variety and labor shortages push the industry toward new automation approaches. RE:LIGHT aims to build research environments spanning the full thermoplastic lightweight manufacturing process chain — from material development through manufacturing and structural testing to repair, disassembly and recycling — supported by adaptive robotics and assistance systems meant to let researchers test production and recycling processes under near-industrial conditions.

IFW says the expanded infrastructure is meant to give companies, including small and mid-size manufacturers, faster access to test new technologies and reduce development risk as they pursue technology transfer with the university partners. RE:LIGHT as also part of a broader development strategy for CFK NORD: the work complements ongoing research at the site from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Fraunhofer IFAM, together building out complementary research platforms for sustainable and adaptive lightweight technologies.

For more information, visit HPCFK’s project page or IFW’s RE:LIGHT project page.

A Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine undergoing inspection and repair. Source (All Images) | Rolls-Royce plc

In the nearly 10 years since the aviation sector was rocked by the announcement of widespread quality issues with engines produced by Rolls-Royce (Derby, U.K.), specifically its Trent 1000, there have been industry-wide supply chain challenges, a second and no less troubling engine scandal from competitor Pratt & Whitney and its GTF engine line, and an almost existential financial crisis stemming from COVID-19 and its impact on global travel. And yet, underlying all this, a £1 billion investment made by Rolls-Royce to turn the tables on its engine portfolio problems has been successfully keeping the company and its air carrier customers flying.

The Trent engine crisis came to a head in 2017, nearly five years after one of Rolls-Royce’s marquee airline partners, Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways (ANA), identified durability issues related to blade erosion and cracking on its Boeing 787 fleet. At this time, Rolls publicly admitted to pervasive fatigue cracking and premature part and coating wear affecting around 500 engines worldwide. Soon after, in April 2018, the inspection interval for Trent 1000 engines from “Package C” — this classification notating the largest standard variant of the Trent 1000 engine, designed to power the Boeing 787 Dreamliner widebody — was cut from 300 flights down to 80 flights when intermediate pressure compressor rotor blades were found to be cracking. Moreover, extended-range twin-engine operational performance standards (ETOPS), which determine how long a twin-engine aircraft can fly on a single engine should the other fail, were cut for the 787 from 300 minutes to 140 minutes, eliminating most trans-oceanic flights.

The Trent 1000 variant was designed exclusively for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

The root causes of the engine durability and quality issues were found to be inadequately addressed tolerances and materials fatigue, along with operational pressure considerations left absent in the engines’ original certification. This troika of issues was compounded by environmental influences that, though foreseeable, were largely out of the engine maker’s control, including hot, sandy, dusty conditions wrought by aircraft operating in geographic regions such as the Middle East and certain parts of Africa and the American Southwest — all popular trans-oceanic stops frequented by the Boeing 787. These conditions exacerbated blade wear that the original Trent 1000 coating systems were simply not designed to handle.

Rolls-Royce subsequently budgeted hundreds of millions of euros in the years leading up to the COVID pandemic to reverse course and get engines in service up the correct standard of maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO). But then, of course, there was the pandemic and its brutal blow to global air travel.

While the technical issues were identified and solutions developed, the crisis continued to persist due to ongoing supply chain bottlenecks. As the Trent engine line, aside from powering the aforementioned 787, is also used on other widebody aircraft such as the Airbus A330, A350 and A380, and Boeing’s 777, the cumulative impact on the airline industry of the years of truncated maintenance schedules, lack of parts needed to make repairs, slashed flight times and the insidious erosion of confidence from both air carriers and passengers alike, left Rolls-Royce in an acutely precarious position.

Fortunately, a definitive fix was identified and a two-phase solution put into action — for which the coatings segment continues to play a crucial role.

A two-phase fix

The company calls it the Durability Enhancement Program (DEP), and it is the driving protocol behind a £1 billion strategy to boost durability, reliability and time on wing across the entire Trent engine portfolio.

Phase 1 of the DEP, certified for existing engines in June 2025 and also applicable to all newly manufactured engines as of January 2025, focused on a high-pressure turbine (HPT) engine blade redesign that features an entirely new thermal barrier and bond coat system that offers 40% more cooling in operation. Since the Trent 1000’s blade failures were largely driven by surface degradation — oxidation, hot corrosion, thermal fatigue of the coating system — this redesign was paramount for Rolls’ overall strategy because the blade’s internal geometry, cooling hole placement and external surface treatment all interact. Among the key results of Phase 1 has been improved flight time and operating resilience. 

Among the issues with the Trent 1000 engine has been coatings failure on the high-pressure turbine (HPT) blades.

“Phase 1 more than doubled time on wing, by increasing the flow of cooler air to the core of the HPT blade by 40% and improving the distribution of that cooling air across the face of the blade,” Rolls-Royce engineering fellow for coatings Ann Bolcavage says. “While the engine has excellent reliability, it’s the durability of the HPT blade that has fallen short of what we expected and what our customers deserve, so that is what we have targeted with our investments. Right now, we have just over half of the fleet being enhanced to the new Trent 1000 XE standard, a process which will be completed by the end of 2027.”

The gas temperatures surrounding an HPT blade can surpass 1700°C, or more than 3000°F, and such temperatures combined with a 787’s cruising speed of more than 560 miles per hour can give a grain of sand the corrosive impact of a small diamond. Thus, as the DEP moves into Phase 2, engine part surface coatings are taking center stage.

Phase 2 underway

Rolls-Royce has been employing platinum-aluminide bond coats paired with two different topcoat methods — electron beam physical vapor deposition (EB-PVD) and suspension plasma spray (SPS). According to Bolcavage, the coats themselves aren’t changing so much as their deposition method.

“For the Trent 1000, we will continue to use the same EB-PVD for the topcoat and bond coating,” she says. “The change is an improved EB-PVD deposition process for the thermal barrier coating to optimize the coating thickness so it can better support the design changes to enhance cooling for the HPT blade alloy. Its durability depends more on getting additional cooling air to the part and then redistributing it more effectively.”

As for the coating on the combustor tiles (heat-resistant parts within the engine combustion chamber), an advanced ceramic coating for hot, dusty routes, such as those through the Middle East and North Africa are being applied on an as-needed basis via new parts. “We will deploy it where we know it will have a material-positive impact by improving time on wing,” Bolcavage says. “This is likely to take the form of an additional layer to the current coating — denser and with a composition designed to slow down attack from molten sand. It is chemically designed to limit reaction with the molten sand and it is dense, due to the nature of the application process, so that it can be a physical barrier and have some erosion resistance.”

Despite the lightening of the HPT blades’ weight, which could result in a change in how those parts heat and cool and therefore how well a coating will adhere, Bolcavage says the change to the substrate’s weight and mass will not have such deleterious effects — in fact, quite the opposite: “Reducing the shroud weight has been done to reduce the likelihood of blade creep, which is the elongation of the blade, and so it helps reduce any likely blade metal-to-coating adhesion mismatch.”

Rolls-Royce expects to have all Trent 1000 engines upgraded to the XE variant within the next standard maintenance window.

While Rolls is keeping its coatings supplier list private because of its commercially sensitive nature, its authorized MRO network extends from Germany and Turkey to Singapore and Beijing. But the lion’s share of frontline improvements is taking place at Rolls’ own facility at its Derby, U.K. headquarters, which boasts an aftermarket support facility that went online in early 2025 and delivers quick-turn DEP modifications, alongside an engine overhaul service unit that the company has on-site. MRO capacity at the Derby footprint has grown by more than 25% and supply chain output specific to the Trent 1000 and XE variants is up by one-third.

In addition to improving time on wing, Phase 2’s enhancements also focus on emissions reduction with a lower engine fuel burn, and a combustor-to-turbine interface — which channels ultra-high temperature gas exiting the combustor core directly into the single-stage HPT turbine nozzle guide vanes — is being redesigned based on the Trent XWB-84 EP, which powers Airbus A350 family aircraft, minimizing thermal leakage and controlling airflow better than the original 1000 iteration.

As for the future of the DEP program, both phases seem to be working as planned.

“By the end of 2027, all in-service engines will have at least Phase 1 HPT turbines installed and our detailed plan to do that considers a number of operational and MRO capacity factors,” Bolcavage says. “Since April 2026, following certification, we have been installing Phase 2 HPT turbines on in-service engines that have not yet had the Phase 1 blade. Those that are already in service with Phase 1 blades will receive Phase 2 blades at their next scheduled shop visit.”

Bolcavage also says some of what Rolls-Royce has learned fixing the Trent 1000’s coatings is informing the company’s development of its other long-haul engine, the Trent XWB-97: “The attack of thermal barrier coatings by CMAS [calcium-magnesium-alumino-silicate] has emerged as an industry-wide phenomenon over recent years and we are addressing this in different ways for different components across the line, but primarily through new CMAS-resistant coatings or by moving to ceramic matrix composite components, which are currently being tested on the Trent XWB-97 in our TestBed 80 facility in Derby.”

Source | Impossible Objects

Impossible Objects (Northbrook, Ill., U.S.), a manufacturing technology company bringing the flexibility of 3D printing to industrial-scale production, has announced a $40 million Series B funding round to scale its composite-based additive manufacturing (CBAM) system and meet growing customer demand. Inflection Equity led the financing, with participation from Aaron Wealth Management, OCA Ventures, Impact Capital and Excell Partners.

Using high-speed production and advanced composite materials, including carbon fiber, CBAM can produce strong, lightweight parts at high volume for applications traditionally served by processes such as CNC machining and injection molding, while eliminating the need for expensive tooling and associated costs.

Impossible Objects will use the financing to increase production of its industrial additive manufacturing (AM) systems, expand customer deployments and build out the service and commercial organization required to support a growing installed base. The funding also gives the company the resources to bring its vision to more customers and make it real at scale.

The technology is already moving into customer environments. Since launching the CBAM 25 in early 2025, the company has taken five orders and begun deploying the system across aerospace, defense and advanced manufacturing, including with the U.S. Air Force, the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR), the Oregon Manufacturing Innovation Center and Rochester Institute of Technology. At U.S. Army Rock Island Arsenal, the technology can support production of up to 10,000 drone bodies/month.

According to the company, CBAM 25 is able to print up to 25 layers per minute and is 15X faster than competing production additive technologies. Its process produces composite parts with strength up to 200 megapascals, up to 4X that of competing AM processes, with minimal shrinkage and warpage.

Impossible Objects has also secured $20 million in U.S. government contracts and awards. Its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I and Phase II awards support work on high-strength, long-range drones, additively manufactured composites with strengths comparable to traditional composites manufacturing, integrated wiring inside of AM parts and lightweight aircraft wing and fuselage structures. The company’s technology has also been sold to or deployed with U.S. Army Rock Island Arsenal and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and is included in the U.S. Air Force Technology Roadmap.

“Our CBAM 25 system is designed from the ground up to meet the high productivity and high reliability needs of advanced manufacturing combined with the flexibility and tool-less manufacturing that modern flexible supply chains require,” says Steve Hoover, CEO of Impossible Objects. “We’re seeing high demand for manufacturing that can adapt faster without sacrificing the performance and reliability customers expect in production [read “On the Radar: 3D Printing and the Agile Production Imperative”]. This funding will help us scale to meet that demand.”

Ingersoll Machine Tools and Innse-Berardi, sister companies within the Camozzi Group, introduce the IBPMax S machining platform designed for high-performance machining of large structural aluminum aerospace components. The machine made its debut at IMTS 2026.

Developed to meet the competitive demands of aerospace manufacturers, the IBPMax S has been engineered to combine structural rigidity, dynamic performance and long-term machining accuracy within a single integrated platform. The machine is designed to handle large, complex aluminum structural components faster while maintaining precision and repeatability. The platform features the Tabm E three-axis head designed to offer high productivity, accessibility and machining flexibility.

Rather than functioning as a standalone component, the IBPMax S platform and the multiaxis Tabm E head have been engineered together as a fully integrated solution, allowing manufacturers to reduce machining times while maintaining process stability and accuracy.

The machine combines two key technologies said to significantly reduce machining time:

• Dynamic performance designed to enable full utilization of available spindle power during high-material-removal operations, maximizing productivity in roughing applications.
• A newly developed ABC head with advanced kinematics, enabling multiaxis machining with minimal angular movements, reducing finishing cycle times while promoting outstanding accuracy and surface quality.

The compact design and optimized inclination of the head also improve accessibility inside deep pockets and complex geometries, reducing repositioning requirements and enabling faster, more efficient machining of aerospace structural components.

“When developing the IBPMax S, we started with a clear objective: to help aerospace manufacturers produce more, with greater precision and in less time,” says Mario Orlandi, sales director — IBPMax and aerospace key account manager. “With its innovative technologies, the IBPMax S represents a significant step forward at a time when aerospace manufacturers must increase productivity to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving global market. Our focus was to develop a solution that provides a measurable competitive advantage, enabling customers to achieve higher productivity without compromising quality.”

Ingersoll Machine Tools and Innse-Berardi, sister companies within the Camozzi Group, introduce the IBPMax S machining platform designed for high-performance machining of large structural aluminum aerospace components. The machine made its debut at IMTS 2026.

Developed to meet the competitive demands of aerospace manufacturers, the IBPMax S has been engineered to combine structural rigidity, dynamic performance and long-term machining accuracy within a single integrated platform. The machine is designed to handle large, complex aluminum structural components faster while maintaining precision and repeatability. The platform features the Tabm E three-axis head designed to offer high productivity, accessibility and machining flexibility.

Rather than functioning as a standalone component, the IBPMax S platform and the multiaxis Tabm E head have been engineered together as a fully integrated solution, allowing manufacturers to reduce machining times while maintaining process stability and accuracy.

The machine combines two key technologies said to significantly reduce machining time:

• Dynamic performance designed to enable full utilization of available spindle power during high-material-removal operations, maximizing productivity in roughing applications.
• A newly developed ABC head with advanced kinematics, enabling multiaxis machining with minimal angular movements, reducing finishing cycle times while promoting outstanding accuracy and surface quality.

The compact design and optimized inclination of the head also improve accessibility inside deep pockets and complex geometries, reducing repositioning requirements and enabling faster, more efficient machining of aerospace structural components.

“When developing the IBPMax S, we started with a clear objective: to help aerospace manufacturers produce more, with greater precision and in less time,” says Mario Orlandi, sales director — IBPMax and aerospace key account manager. “With its innovative technologies, the IBPMax S represents a significant step forward at a time when aerospace manufacturers must increase productivity to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving global market. Our focus was to develop a solution that provides a measurable competitive advantage, enabling customers to achieve higher productivity without compromising quality.”

Improving Tool Accessibility, Maximizing Productivity

The IBPMax S is a machining platform intended for the high-performance machining of large, complex structural aluminum components. This fully integrated system contains a new TABM E head, which the companies say delivers productivity improvements of up to 40% compared to conventional solutions.

This single integrated system is designed to maximize productivity, improve tool accessibility within deep pockets and complex geometries and reduce machining times without compromising the accuracy or process reliability standards set by the aerospace sector.

Additionally, Ingersoll is highlighting its Modern Optimization solutions for machine tool life extension. Rather than replacing an entire machine tool, Ingersoll says its upgrades to key technologies like CNC, ram, crossrail and automation systems can affordably modernize machine tools, improve performance and minimize downtime without sacrificing or replacing manufacturers’ valuable assets. 

Attendees can witness the unveiling of the IBMax S at the booth, as well as speak with Ingersoll professionals about modernizing their operations and more.

Source | ITECH 

The International Conference on Thermoplastic Composites (ITHEC) 2026 will take place Oct. 28-29 in Bremen, Germany. Organized by Composites United in cooperation with Faserinstitut Bremen (FIBRE), ITHEC is one of the leading international platforms dedicated exclusively to thermoplastic composites (TPC), bringing together experts from aerospace, automotive, energy, industrial applications and research.

The conference program for ITHEC 2026 is now available. It includes presentations from leaders in the field, including Fraunhofer, TPRC, SAM XL, Avel Robotics, NLR, DLR, Engel, FIDAMC, Coexpair Dynamics, FACC, Greene Tweed, Kautex Textron, UniSQ, herone, Daher, Toray, Carbon Fiber Conversions and many more.

It also features the panel discussion, “High-rate TPC Aerostructures: Ready or Not?” Moderated by CompositesWorld executive editor, Ginger Gardiner, the session’s panelists include a variety of industry leaders and experts:

• Maarten Bach – KVE Composites Group
• Allison Christy – NASA Glenn Research Center
• Molly Hall – Centre for Future Materials, UniSQ
• Katharina Kosheck – Fraunhofer IFAM
• David Leach – Composite Material Solutions
• Angelos Miaris – Airbus Aerostructures Bremen

While TPC parts in A350 and B787 production are well-proven and welded leading/ trailing edges and rudders have been flying for decades, the apparent signal for the next-gen single aisle, as well as air mobility platforms in certification, is “not yet.” Perceived gaps include inspection and certification of welded unidirectional/primary structures, proper adhesion of paints and coatings, validated repair procedures and cost of materials/manufacturing.

CW’s panel of experts — from OEM program managers to welding experts to TPC engineers with years of parts fabrication experience — will discuss the technology’s position and readiness, including these issues and possible competition from high-rate thermosets and reformable/recyclable epoxy-based vitrimers.

Don’t miss this chance to hear from and engage with the industry’s leaders and ask your questions! Reserve your place at this important industry event now.

JetZero's Jet1 Demonstrator, a full-scale blended-wing-body aircraft, is taking shape in partnership with Scaled Composites. Source | JetZero

At the end of August 2026, JetZero (Long Beach, Calif., U.S.) closed a senior secured term loan facility of up to $100 million. The capital extends a run of program milestones for JetZero’s all-wing Z4 aircraft, which is designed for the middle market (~250 passenger capacity for up to 5,000 nautical mile range) and will cut fuel burn and emissions by up to 50% relative to conventional tube-and-wing aircraft at the same passenger capacity.

Proceeds will go towards the acceleration of technology maturation, Demonstrator Jet1 manufacturing and buildout of JetZero’s U.S. manufacturing and test facilities in Greensboro, North Carolina, along with growth and working capital in support of the company’s U.S. operations.

“This facility is targeted for pace,” says Tom O’Leary, JetZero CEO and co-founder. “Through this facility, we will fund tooling and production facilities in North Carolina, advancing aerospace innovation and reindustrialization.” The Z4 is expected to enter service in the early 2030s.

The lender group includes Pinegrove Credit Partners backed by Brookfield and HRTG Partners, alongside Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First-Citizens Bank.

JetZero continues to advance the build of Jet1, its full-scale demonstrator, with Scaled Composites (Mojave, Calif., U.S.), a Northrop Grumman company. The build was 40% complete as of June 2026, with its first flight scheduled for Q4 2027. That same month, JetZero broke ground on Factory1, its Z4 production facility in North Carolina. JetZero will hire more than 14,000 people over 10 years to support the aircraft.

Also read “JetZero Advances Composite BWB Demonstrator Build, Reaches FAA Certification Milestone.”

Thermoplastic composite (TPC) panels manufactured at KVE’s facility in the Netherlands. The automated production cell highlights KVE’s expertise in advanced TPC manufacturing technologies for aerospace and defense applications. Source | KVE 

KVE (The Hague, Netherlands) by Daher celebrates its 30th anniversary and is inaugurating a major expansion of its production facility in The Hague. This milestone marks the beginning of a new phase of growth for the Dutch company, driven by strong aerospace and defense market demand, its expertise in advanced composites and the synergies developed since joining the Daher Group in 2019.

Founded in 1996, KVE specializes in the design, manufacturing and repair of high value-added composite structures. The company primarily serves the defense and aerospace sectors, which account for approximately 80% and 20% of its business, respectively. Its products are used in radar systems, communications equipment, drones, aircraft wings and next-generation rotor blades.

Originally established as an engineering company, KVE has progressively developed its own industrial capabilities and has become a leading European company in induction welding for thermoplastic composites (TPC). This patented technology enables structures to be assembled without rivets or adhesives while reducing weight, costs and production lead times.

Today, KVE holds a portfolio of approximately 20 patents and has secured six new patented innovations during the past 2 years, notably in the fields of radomes, composite blades and thermoplastic welding processes.

Daher’s acquisition of KVE in 2019 marked a pivotal step in the company’s development. KVE’s expertise in TPC and induction welding complemented Daher’s capabilities in the development, industrialization, certification and production of complex aerospace structures. Together, the two companies have established an integrated value chain spanning the design, manufacturing and certification of advanced composite components.

Since 2020, KVE’s revenue has quadrupled and its workforce has tripled. This growth has been supported by strong market demand as well as Daher’s industrial expertise, certification capabilities, investment capacity, business development support and access to major aerospace and defense players. In addition, KVE’s EN9100 certification enables the company to meet the stringent quality and industrial performance requirements of these sectors.

As one of the Daher Group’s first strategic international acquisitions, KVE contributes to Daher’s international growth while providing cutting-edge expertise in advanced composites and thermoplastic technologies. Collaboration between French and Dutch teams promotes knowledge sharing and accelerates innovation in these high-potential fields.

Expanding industrial capabilities, new growth

KVE invested more than €2.5 million between 2025 and 2026 to acquire new equipment, automate manufacturing processes and increase production capacity.

Inaugurated as part of the company’s 30th anniversary celebrations, the new Ypenburg facility — located on the historic site of Dutch aircraft manufacturer Fokker in The Hague — adds nearly 1,800 square meters to KVE’s footprint. The facility will house, among other capabilities, a dedicated production line for blades, wing structures and advanced composite components serving the aerospace and defense sectors. This expansion will enable KVE to support increasing customer production rates while further enhancing the site’s industrial performance and competitiveness.

“KVE’s anniversary is an important milestone, but above all, it marks the beginning of a new chapter,” says Pierre Rouch, managing director of KVE. “Since joining Daher, we have significantly accelerated our development. By combining our expertise in advanced composites with the Daher Group's industrial capabilities, aerospace experience and international presence, we have created an environment that fosters innovation and growth. These new investments will enable us to sustainably support the ramp-up of our customers’ programs.”

KVE intends to continue its development as Daher’s advanced composites solutions incubator. The company will continue investing in industrial capabilities, automation and innovation to support future European aerospace and defense programs while strengthening its position within the Dutch industrial and technology ecosystem.

Massivit Service Center at Artek. Source | Massivit

Massivit (Lod, Israel) is expanding its RapidWings manufacturing platform by delivering composite tooling services in North America. Through the company’s collaboration with manufacturing and design firm Artek (Portland, Oregon), the RapidWings platform will provide on-demand, large-format tooling services, prototyping and demonstrations for aerospace and defense customers at the Artek facility, with the aim to significantly accelerate composites manufacturing in North America.

The Artek collaboration complements RapidWings’ existing operations (read “Massivit Opens Europe-Based Service Center...”) and expands its availability for North American customers in order to reduce traditional tooling lead times and overcome recognized production backlogs.

At the core of the RapidWings North America operation lies Massivit’s Cast-In-Motion (CIM) tooling technology that combines advanced additive manufacturing (AM) with dual-component materials to deliver large isotropic molds, masters, jigs and fixtures, as well as mandrels for hollow composites. According to the company, this provides composites manufacturers with a local, on-demand service that reduces tooling time by 90%.

The RapidWings platform’s services include design and digital tooling to tool finishing, full-scale prototypes and demonstrations. Unlike conventional tooling methods that involve modeling foams, tooling boards or 3D printed thermoplastics, CIM technology delivers isotropic production tools that are autoclave-ready and suitable for a range of temperatures. Co-developed by Sika (Bad Urach, Germany) and Massivit, CIM casting materials provide optimal stability, thermal resistance, adhesion and surface quality. CIM molds withstand hundreds of cycles, thereby addressing the rising demand for mass-produced drones, airframes and composite structures.

“U.S. military branches, OEMs and defense contractors are striving to clear production backlogs caused by surging demand that outpaces legacy manufacturing capabilities,” notes Yossi Azarzar, CEO of Massivit. “RapidWings is aiming to transform aerospace and defense infrastructure across multiple regions, allowing both governments and industry to accomplish sovereign, autonomous production at the point of need.”

Source | Getty Images

Massivit has launched RapidWings — a turnkey composite manufacturing platform designed to help defense and aerospace manufacturers reduce production lead times and tooling costs. Built on Massivit’s Cast-In-Motion (CIM) technology, the platform is already operational in Israel and is currently scaling its operations globally.

RapidWings is designed to significantly compress composite tooling lead times. In some cases, processes that previously took 3 months are now said to take a matter of days. RapidWings partners have reported up to 70% savings in cost versus conventional metal and machinable-board tooling.

Against the backdrop of surging defense budgets worldwide, OEMs and manufacturing primes in the defense industry have suffered backlogs due to unstable supply chains and outsourcing constraints. Over the past year, Massivit has received increasing demand for manufacturing services from defense buyers in Europe, the U.S., Southeast Asia and India. The company is establishing RapidWings as a global network of local, on-demand, sovereign production facilities to overcome recognized manufacturing bottlenecks in the defense arena.

The RapidWings network will consist of regional partnerships — Joint Manufacturing Alliances (JMAs) — with certified Tier 2 composites manufacturing facilities. By embedding Massivit’s CIM digital tooling capability into established manufacturing facilities, JMA partners will have the opportunity to accelerate and scale production without additional capital expenditure.

The first JMA — between Israel-based Comparts Ltd. and Massivit — is currently fully operational, with ongoing defense engagements serving leading OEMs. According to numerous defense programs completed to date, the RapidWings platform has been shown to overcome backlogs by significantly shortening production tooling lead times from months to days, Massivit reports. The RapidWings model enables JMA partners to retain full operational control of their existing business and customer relationships while acquiring the capability to accept a greater volume of orders. Results of programs completed thus far are said to have revealed a 40-70% reduction in tooling costs as compared to conventional tooling methods.

Massivit is currently accepting applications from qualified composite manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe to join its expanding RapidWings network.

“Defense is a necessity worldwide,” says Yossi Azarzar, CEO of Massivit. “By cutting manufacturing times, RapidWings’ technology could save defense and aeronautical companies months and millions. RapidWings marks a strategic milestone for Massivit as we pivot from providing industrial 3D printers to delivering a much-needed defense manufacturing platform that overcomes bottlenecks and empowers manufacturers to scale.”

Source | Noemi Aerospace

Syensqo (Brussels, Belgium) has been selected as a materials partner by Noemi Aerospace (Bergen, Norway) for its all-electric amphibious aircraft, with the ambition of becoming the world’s first certified fully electric amphibious seaplane.

Designed to carry nine passengers and operate from water and conventional runways, the aircraft is being developed for regional transport as well as cargo, search and rescue and medical evacuation missions. Its amphibious capability is intended to provide access to routes and communities where conventional aviation infrastructure may be limited.

For an electric seaplane operating in demanding coastal and marine environments, structural integrity, weight efficiency and durability are critical. Noemi’s material selection reflects the need to combine high structural performance with the processing flexibility required for large composite structures.

Under the agreement, NOEMI Aerospace will use Syensqo’s MTM 45-1 carbon fiber prepreg in the aircraft’s airframe, together with AeroPaste structural paste adhesive for wing assembly, supporting the development of lightweight, high-performance structures as the aircraft progresses toward certification.

“We wanted to manufacture the wing skins and spars in a 21-meter single span, so we needed an out-of-autoclave [OOA] material with proven performance,” says Simon Bendrey, chief engineer of Noemi Aerospace. “Syensqo’s MTM 45-1 is a primary structure-capable material with FAA approval and independently verified NCAMP data. We have a solution that will support our certification approach while helping us achieve the low structural weight required for our first prototype aircraft. We will also use Syensqo’s AeroPaste structural adhesive to bond the wing components and achieve the performance we need.”

Sources (top left, clockwise) | Addyx srl, NordSpace, NLR and Hydrogen in Aviation (HIA) Alliance

STRATO-V project

Source | Addyx srl

Addyx (Chieti, Italy), Comec Innovative and Università degli Studi dell'Aquila have held the kick-off meeting for the Structured Tank Reinforced with Advanced TOwpreg – Type 5 (STRATO-V) project to develop a new generation of Type 5 linerless pressure vessels, focusing on innovative materials, advanced composite technologies and digital engineering tools to obtain increasingly lighter, high-performance and sustainable solutions. The project is carried out with the contribution of the ERDF Program 2021/2027 (Intervention 1.1.1.2 and Intervention 1.1.2.1). Learn more here.

Source | NordSpace

NordSpace’s first linerless Type 5 pressure vessel in Canada

NordSpace (Markham, Ontario, Canada) has manufactured what it says is Canada’s first linerless, cryogenic-compatible Type 5 composite pressure vessel produced using automated fiber placement (AFP). The vessel will undergo destructive testing before the company scales the process up to orbital-size tanks this summer at its Advanced Manufacturing for Aerospace Lab (AMA Lab).

Read more: “NordSpace installs robotic AFP systems, progresses build of launch vehicle tanks and primary structures.”

The work was carried out with the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada and supports NordSpace's Tundra and Tempest orbital launch vehicles, which will rely on the same composite-overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) technology for flight tanks and primary structures. The milestone accompanies a broader build-out of the company’s vertically integrated manufacturing capability, including new large-scale robotic AFP systems intended to domestically produce lighter, higher-performance pressure vessels for Canada’s orbital launch program.

Hydrogen in Aviation report notes accelerated development, urges investment

Source | Hydrogen In Aviation

The Hydrogen in Aviation (HIA) Alliance — its members include Airbus, Rolls-Royce, easyJet, GKN Aerospace, Intelligent Energy and Bristol Airport — has published a report finding that the U.K. has built an early lead in hydrogen-powered aviation through technology demonstrations, regulatory groundwork and long-term R&D investment, but warns that gaps in liquid hydrogen supply, airport infrastructure and the research-to-commercialization pathway could let other nations overtake that position.

The report calls for a National Hydrogen Flight Program to coordinate industry, regulators and government departments, alongside targeted airport infrastructure funding, continued aerospace R&D support beyond TRL 6 and a dedicated aviation hydrogen supply plan. It cites recent milestones including Rolls-Royce and easyJet’s completed 4-year hydrogen gas turbine demonstration — which ran a Pearl 15 engine on 100% hydrogen through a full flight cycle — and GKN Aerospace’s H2GEAR-derived cryogenic power distribution work, much of which depends on composite pressure vessels and cryogenic tank technology for hydrogen storage and delivery.

Source | NLR

NLR hydrogen drone demonstration at Rotterdam airport

Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) and Rotterdam The Hague Airport (RTHA), working with partners in the European TULIPS – Green Airports program, flew a drone powered by liquid hydrogen at the airport, marking the first demonstration of a liquid hydrogen application at an operational Dutch airport. The test exercised the full supply chain — storage, fueling and application — using NLR’s HYDRA-II drone as a research platform and drawing on the liquid hydrogen storage facility the two organizations previously built at RTHA.

NLR CTO Martin Nagelsmit says the work feeds into the organization’s PHYREX project, which is converting an electric Pipistrel Velis Electro research aircraft to fly on liquid hydrogen, with first test flights targeted for 2027. TULIPS operates under the EU’s Clean Aviation initiative, pairing airports with knowledge institutions and companies to develop and test aviation technologies, including cryogenic storage and fuel delivery systems that liquid hydrogen aircraft depend on.

PAL-V FlyDrive vehicles configured for emergency response and Dutch fire brigade operations, displayed in drive and flight mode at the company's headquarters in the Netherlands. Source | PAL-V

Dutch company Personal Air Landing Vehicle (PAL-V, Raamdonksveer) has obtained European Production Organization Approval (POA) for its composite FlyDrive mobility solution, authorizing the company to manufacture aviation products under EASA regulations. With this milestone, PAL-V now holds both automotive and aviation production approvals required to manufacture its products on an industrial scale. 

PAL-V has ensured compliance with existing regulations across all areas of its development program. With the achievement of its POA, PAL-V has successfully completed several critical certification milestones, including receiving a “No Technical Objection” from the EASA in 2025.

POA confirms that PAL-V’s production system meets the stringent requirements for airworthy manufacturing. “It confirms that we have not only developed a groundbreaking platform for FlyDrive products but have also built an organization capable of developing, certifying and manufacturing airworthy products,” says Robert Dingemanse, CEO of PAL-V. 

PAL-V plans to integrate developments in autonomous flight, advanced materials and components, and zero-emission propulsion systems.

Source | Renegade Materials Corp.

Raven cure simulation is now available for Renegade Materials Corp.’s (Miamisburg, Ohio, U.S.) RM-2014-LDk-Tk low dielectric epoxy resin system, providing engineers with an additional digital tool to support the design and processing of low dielectric structures.

Raven, developed by Convergent Manufacturing Technologies (Vancouver, BC, Canada), is a process simulation platform that enables engineers to evaluate material cure behavior under different processing conditions. The capability complements the extensive material design data already available for Renegade’s NCAMP-qualified RM-2014-LDk-Tk-4581 prepreg system.

RM-2014-LDk-Tk-4581 is qualified to the NCAMP NMS201/1 material specification, with publicly available mechanical design allowables and dielectric property data. Together, NCAMP design data and Raven simulation provide engineers with complementary resources from material selection and component design through process development and manufacturing. By reducing the need to independently generate design data and supporting earlier evaluation of processing conditions, these tools can help reduce development time, cost and risk.

For example, an engineer developing an aerospace radome can use the NCAMP data to evaluate RM-2014-LDk-Tk-4581 against the structural and electrical requirements. As the design progresses toward manufacturing and certification, Raven can be used to evaluate cure behavior under proposed processing conditions before moving into physical trials. This can accelerate the design-build-certify cycle, an increasingly valuable capability for aerospace and defense programs operating on aggressive development schedules.

“Providing customers with high-performance material is only part of what we want to accomplish,” says Thomas Sutter, director of sales, Renegade Materials Corp. “Our goal is to give engineers the data and tools they need to confidently design with our materials and transition those designs into manufacturing.”

Find the NCAMP specifications and design allowables here.

The integrated COMPASS cell runs as one entity. Dry fiber cutting and preforming feed directly to the Langzauner composite press via FANUC robots traversing a shared 85 meters of track. Source | University of Sheffield AMRC

According to an analysis by the Aerospace Technology Institute’s (ATI, Bedfordshire, U.K.), the next-generation single-aisle aircraft requires a production rate of 180 per month by 2046, with the underlying manufacturing technologies required to reach technology readiness level (TRL) 6 by 2030 to support entry into service in the mid-to-late 2030s. With single-aisle aircraft projected to account for roughly 70% of all deliveries through to 2050, and for manufacturers to significantly increase the amount of composite aerostructures throughout the aircraft, composites manufacturing rate needs to grow more than sixfold in comparison to the current state-of-the-art to capture this opportunity. 

Boeing UK (Sheffield, U.K.) is building manufacturing intelligence to produce large composite aerostructures at high rate through the Isothermic High-Rate Sustainable Structures (IHSS) program, which develops, tests and automates an isothermal dry fiber resin infusion process. The IHSS program is an R&D initiative aiming to reach TRL 6 by its conclusion. Although it will validate laminate quality through nondestructive testing and material characterization, the unique requirements of Boeing’s commercial customers and certification will be addressed at a later stage. 

A FANUC M-2000iA/1700L places material onto a curved tool. The system deposits 200 kilograms an hour in standard configuration against 20-50 for automated fiber placement (AFP). Source | University of Sheffield AMRC 

“Some of the established composites manufacturing processes are hard to scale for consistent quality and speed,” says Steve Belcher, Boeing's chief engineer on the IHSS program. “Continuing with that approach means replicating slow processes, and the business case weakens with each iteration. IHSS aims to produce high-quality composites at rate, in a scalable way.”

IHSS is the first initiative to operate within COMPASS (Composites at Speed and Scale), a £54 million open-access facility that the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC, Sheffield, U.K.) opened in July 2026. This facility aims to advance composites manufacturing by moving processes out of the autoclave, which often limits the rate of production for large structures. 

Isothermal goals

Autoclave cycles comprise ramping the prepreg part up to cure temperature, a dwell to achieve cure and a cooldown. Each stage costs time and energy. In contrast, an isothermal process infuses and cures at one constant temperature, often releasing the part while it is still hot without distortion. Removing the heating and cooling ramps cuts the cure time and energy costs while dry fiber processed by vacuum infusion or resin transfer molding (RTM) removes the autoclave. However, the latter introduces two other constraints: achieving complete wet-out of the preform and meeting porosity or void content requirements.

Boeing has a long-established relationship with composite aerostructures. This image shows a production line of the heavily composite 787. Source | Boeing 

COMPASS uses matched-die RTM, with hard steel tooling on both faces. Resin injects into dry fiber under pressure, driving fiber volume fraction toward the roughly 60% structural laminates need. The system’s tooling requires the preform to reach the mold in the correct shape and position every cycle because there’s no flexibility to absorb error.

“The resin chemistry sets the limit,” says Darren Wells, senior technical fellow at the AMRC, who leads the composites side of COMPASS. “The nirvana point of this project will be a fully isothermal component, but the resin chemistry isn’t quite there yet. Aerospace-grade infusion resins carry heavy tougheners, which raise viscosity and lengthen cure time, so we drive up the glass transition temperature [T_g] and mechanical properties post-cure with controlled heating and cooling ramps in an oven in the meantime. Our benchmark is autoclave prepreg, but to achieve the anticipated production rates for a single-aisle, it needs to be closer to automotive RTM, which runs low-viscosity snap-cure resins in well under an hour.”

Building the preform

The COMPASS production line starts at a 21.4-meter Zünd (Altstätten, Switzerland) cutting table where an ultrasonic head cuts plies from a roll of dry carbon fiber fabric. The Zünd system can hold ±0.2 millimeter tolerance across 20 meters, cutting at one end while material lifts from the other.

Two 5-meter FibreFORM grippers from Loop Technology (Dorchester, U.K.) pick each ply off the table under high-flow vacuum. Each gripper carries close to 290 individually controlled suction axes, synchronized about a thousand times a second so the tool moves as one surface. The gripper end effectors are mounted on two of FANUC’s (Oshino-mura, Japan) M-2000iA/1700L 4,683-millimeter-reach robots, part of a five-robot fleet on 85 meters of track within the facility.

The underside of a 5-meter FibreFORM gripper. Close to 290 individually controlled suction axes let the tool grip firmly where a ply must stay put and ease off where it needs to slide, forming double curvature without wrinkles. Source | University of Sheffield AMRC 

“Placing a flat ply into a curved tool without wrinkling is the constraint the system solves automatically,” says Alun Reece, chief executive officer of Loop Technology. “A flat sheet wraps onto a single-curvature surface easily, but on a double-curvature surface like the shape of a real aerostructure, it cannot be covered by a flat sheet without shear, the same reason a sheet of paper will not wrap around a ball without creasing. FibreFORM predicts where shear will be high and where it will be low, then grips firmly where the material should stay put and eases off where it needs to move, allowing the material to move predictably so it can follow the desired form.”

The gripper system places to an accuracy of ±2 millimeters and deposits 200 kilograms/hour in standard configuration, though in trials it has reached 350 kilograms/hour at full capacity, a significant increase over the 20-50 kilograms/hour for typical automated fiber placement (AFP) technology. A structured-light scanner reads every ply for position and defects as it is tacked, closing a machine vision check before the next ply lands. Subscale trials refined this preforming sequence and the cure tool design, drawing on the AMRC’s RTM experience across aerospace and automotive. The cell builds the dry fiber preform under a consolidation hood and moves it to the press as one stack.

Press, injection and cure

The Langzauner press is featured in the center of this image, reported as one of the largest built for integral aerostructure parts. Source | University of Sheffield AMRC  

The Langzauner (Lambrechten, Austria) composite press in the COMPASS facility is reported to be one of the largest ever built for aerocomposite parts. It applies up to 2,400 tonnes across a 10.5 × 3.5-meter platen at roughly 8-10 bar over a typical press tool, matched to autoclave pressure so parts transfer into known process windows.

“The challenge was not simply to provide 2,400 tonnes of pressing force, but to control that force with very high precision across a tool of this scale,” says Alexander Wiesner, executive vice president at Langzauner. “Each of the hydraulic cylinders runs closed-loop servo-hydraulic control, holding force accuracy to 0.1% and position to hundredths of a millimeter. The press is also equipped with active platen tilting and two-axis rotation, enabling controlled gap-injection strategies and allowing the process to be adapted to varying component thicknesses and resin-flow requirements.”

Heating across the press is zoned to match thermal mass throughout. Eight thermal oil units feed the tool, producing around a megawatt of heating with roughly 750 kilowatts of chilling, with zones that pull a cold region up without overshooting its neighbors. Resin arrives through a KraussMaffei (Parsdorf, Germany) impingement-mixing RTM unit taken from automotive practices, and enhanced for aerospace through sub-scale trials at the AMRC, which doses and mixes the two components and self-cleans between shots so the cell doesn’t have to stop for a manual purge. 

A cure that runs 8-10 hours in an autoclave is the process the program aims to shorten substantially; the AMRC states IHSS targets a reduction in large-component manufacturing time from around 40 hours to 4. A 12-meter oven downstream post-cures to ensure Tg is where a part needs it, before robotic trimming against a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) datum takes place.

Every machine within COMPASS is digitally connected and reports into a digital twin of the entire facility. Sensor streams route through a lightweight messaging protocol called message queuing telemetry transport into a unified namespace, so a torque or temperature reading carries its context down to the axis, robot and cell, then writes to an encrypted record that travels with the part as a digital passport. 

“As the cell was built digitally connected from the start, the AMRC holds a validated digital twin of the line checked against machines whose real accuracy is known,” says Wells. “A company can simulate building a future factory against it before construction. That is a key part of the design of this facility that places systems that are produced in here at TRL 6.”

Every machine reports into one data system, with sensor streams brought together and written to an encrypted digital passport that travels with every part. Source | University of Sheffield AMRC 

What COMPASS means for the supply chain

Boeing and the AMRC have successfully demonstrated the IHSS production process with subscale 3- and 4-meter-long representative aerostructure sections. Using existing equipment, they have translated the results into tooling, handling and cure specifications for the facility’s 8-meter demonstrator.

Despite the high quality of the test parts, constraints remain. The fully isothermal cure is not yet available and full-scale tooling was still arriving as the facility opened in July. “The main thing we’re waiting on is the RTM infusion tool that goes in the press,” Belcher says. “We’re still proving out the route to manufacture at full scale, but COMPASS shows the sequence holds at scale so far.” 

The £29.5 million equipment inside COMPASS forms part of an £80 million combined program with IHSS, held under open access. As such, any composite parts manufacturer can develop and de-risk a high-rate process using the equipment without buying it. That removes a significant cost barrier that has kept smaller firms out of primary composite aerostructures, potentially diversifying the industry. The facility is expected to support thousands of skilled U.K. manufacturing jobs and draw investment into the domestic aerospace supply chain.

IHSS aims to stimulate a wide range of advancements. “IHSS weighs manufacturability and serviceability from the start, down to cure tool maintenance and raw material waste,” says Lane Ballard, Boeing’s chief technology officer. “These are not academic exercises. They’re practical steps to reduce waste, shorten cycle times, shrink factory footprints and lower energy use.”

The automated placement, press cure and digital thread sequence demonstrated so far also applies to defense structures, wind energy, transport and urban air mobility — wherever large composite parts must be made at rate. “This is a real drive away from what industry used to deem as lightweight black metal parts,” says Wells. “Here we design for composites and for high-rate manufacturing at the same time, using systems optimized for composites from the outset.”

Source | Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce (London, U.K.) has announced a £300 million investment in its U.K. manufacturing and engineering facilities, spanning its Civil Aerospace campus in Derby, its defense propulsion site in Bristol and advanced manufacturing operations in Glasgow, Rotherham and Ansty. The program will help the company’s U.K. infrastructure meet manufacturing demand and support the development of future aerospace programs, a portfolio that, based on previous CW reporting, increasingly relies on composite fan systems and ceramic matrix composite (CMC) engine components. 

The largest share of this recent investment, more than £140 million, goes to Derby for new engineering and manufacturing services facilities. Additional aftermarket support investments are intended to increase capacity and operational efficiency. The work is expected to be completed in 2028. Derby is Rolls-Royce’s U.K. hub for design, engineering, program management and advanced manufacturing for its Trent large commercial engines. It also houses the company’s engine testing and precision casting capabilities.

In Bristol, home to Rolls-Royce’s U.K. military power and propulsion business, the company is investing more than £90 million in a facility upgrade program scheduled for completion in 2031. The program includes new collaborative workspaces, upgraded IT infrastructure and expanded maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) capability for a site that employs more than 3,500 people. Bristol provides design, engineering and through-life support for the MT30 marine gas turbine, the Eurofighter Typhoon’s EJ200 engine (which Rolls-Royce supports as a partner in the EUROJET consortium) and the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP). The investment coincides with 60 years of Rolls-Royce operations in Bristol, following its 1966 acquisition of Bristol Siddeley Engines.

Three additional sites will receive machinery and capability upgrades:

• Inchinnan, Glasgow: £43 million for machinery that will enable the manufacture of new engine components.
• Rotherham: £19 million at the Advanced Blade Casting Facility, supplemented by £2 million from the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority. Rolls-Royce says the program will double the facility’s output of turbine blades by 2030.
• Ansty, Warwickshire: £5 million in machinery upgrades to improve manufacturing capability and efficiency.

Rolls-Royce reports it has invested more than £3 billion in the U.K. since launching its transformation program in 2023, and that it spent more than £2.8 billion with U.K.-based suppliers in 2025, most of it outside London and the South East. The new investment will offer multi-year stability to the domestic engineering partners, component manufacturers and small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in its supply chain.

Some of Rolls-Royce’s Derby capacity is already directed at engine durability. Sister publication Products Finishing details this work in its recent cover story on the Trent 1000 recovery. It covers the company’s £1 billion Durability Enhancement Program (DEP), which centers on redesigned high-pressure turbine (HPT) blades and refined thermal barrier coating processes. Much of the frontline modification work is carried out at a Derby aftermarket support facility that came online in early 2025. Rolls-Royce engineering fellow for coatings Ann Bolcavage told PF that CMC components are also being tested on the Trent XWB-97 at the company’s TestBed 80 facility in Derby. These tests are one route the company is pursuing against molten-sand (CMAS) attack on thermal barrier coatings. Separately, at the 2026 Farnborough International Airshow, CW reported on Rolls-Royce's UltraFan CTi fan, which pairs carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) blades protected by titanium leading edges with a composite fan case.

Aeroengine OEMs build out regional capacity

Rolls-Royce’s announcement follows a series of production investments by aeroengine manufacturers that CW has covered in 2026, as commercial delivery rates and defense demand both climb. Several of these investments have direct U.K. or European ties.

GE Aerospace. In March 2026, GE Aerospace (Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.) outlined plans to invest more than €110 million across its European manufacturing sites. The plan includes €10 million for U.K. test and manufacturing equipment upgrades and expanded electronics and component manufacturing, plus workforce training grants to vocational schools in the U.K. and Italy. The company conducts composites work, particularly CMC production and research, at European sites in the U.K. and Germany. The European plan sits alongside a second consecutive $1 billion U.S. investment, more than $275 million of which is earmarked for sites producing defense engines and components. GE’s U.K. propeller division, Dowty Propellers (Gloucester, U.K.), is also contributing its composite blade experience to the Open Fan architecture being developed under the CFM RISE program, as CW reported from Farnborough.

Pratt & Whitney. Pratt & Whitney (East Hartford, Conn., U.S.), an RTX business, opened its European Technology and Innovation Center (ETIC) in the Netherlands in late 2025. The center focuses on advanced gas turbine, hybrid-electric and hydrogen propulsion research with partners including TU Delft and the Netherlands Aerospace Group. On the supply side, Albany Engineered Composites (Portsmouth, N.H., U.S.) received a long-term contract through 2036 to produce composite structural engine components for the GTF engine. The contract is the company’s first volume production program with Pratt & Whitney.

For ongoing coverage of production ramp-ups across the defense and aerospace sectors, sign up for SurgePoint, Manufacturing Connected’s manufacturing intelligence newsletter for defense, aerospace and surging markets.

Rendering of Switchblade. Source | Samson Sky

Samson Sky (Prineville, Ore., U.S.), creator of the composites-intensive Switchblade flying car, has secured an investment of $80 million from Dubai-based Matin Group (United Arab Emirates). According to Sam Bousfield, CEO and founder of Samson Sky and designer of the Switchblade, these funds will be used to establish Samson Sky’s first 180,000-square-foot Switchblade production facility, to be located in the U.S.

Samson Sky has also signed a Joint Investment Agreement with the Matin Group, and the two companies have begun setting up a joint venture (JV) to accelerate into commercial production, with $20 million still remaining to be raised for full production funding.

The transaction reflects Matin Group’s strategy of selectively partnering with innovative, execution-ready businesses that combine strong commercial potential with long-term value creation. Former aerobatic pilot and Samson Sky ambassador Anna V. Grebenshchikova was instrumental in bringing the two organizations together.

“The future is not built by those who wait for certainty — it is built by those who recognize possibility before it becomes obvious,” says Mustafa Matin, CEO of Matin Group. “At Matin Group, we partner with people who have the courage to challenge convention and the discipline to deliver.”

With seating for two plus luggage, the Switchblade flying car is a hybrid-electric driving and flying vehicle with sports car performance on the ground and high performance in the air. It runs on premium auto gas, fits in a standard garage and can be driven to a nearby airport using highways or local roads. Samson Motors Inc. (dba Samson Sky) has been dedicated in designing, building and testing the Switchblade to solve regional travel (200-500 miles) challenges. For safety and insurability, all flying surfaces are enclosed within the vehicle while in driving mode. The Switchblade transforms from driving to flying mode in 3 minutes at the push of a button. It had its successful official first flight in November 2023. 

In November 2024, Samson Sky acknowledged that the Switchblade’s primary structures use carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites rather than traditional carbon fiber/epoxy, following 5 years of R&D to validate the approach. Composites consultant Steve McGinnis said that automated production and use of TPC materials will allow Samon to “make parts 8X faster and at half the cost.” 

Adrien Marchandise sails 754 with the foil extended. Source | Manon Le Guen via MiniLab

“A flying carpet. That is what it feels like,” explains Adrien Marchandise, co-founder and chief technology officer of Avel Robotics (Lorient, France), when his monohull racing yacht, a Mini 6.50 named 754, finds its rhythm on foils. The rush of water around the hull goes quiet. The boat, usually heeled hard against the wind, comes upright. Then it accelerates; all onboard are subject to a new collection of forces and movement. “Pressing the correct button on the autopilot becomes a real physical challenge under the lateral movement of the boat constantly pushing and pulling me around the cockpit,” says Marchandise.

“When you reach such a high speed, at one moment all [of] the boat is just out of the water, because you finish by having too much lift,” notes Marchandise, acknowledging the challenge of hydrofoils — not just in producing them, but also handling them in the water. Push a foil hard enough, he says, and the boat can leave the water’s grip entirely. “The foil is not in the water anymore, and you lose your steering control. You lose any control whatsoever. Then it’s just a matter of where the cat will fall on the ground: Is it going to be on its foot, its head or its back? You can’t really control that.”

The foils in question are 90% thermoplastic composite (TPC), 10% of which comprises second-life recycled materials. They are built with technology that Marchandise has spent the better part of a decade developing, and have pushed 754 to 26 knots (30 miles/hour), which is up from roughly 20 knots without them.

That performance is the payoff from combining TPC with Avel’s established automated fiber placement (AFP)-based manufacturing technology, already used to provide thermoset composite foils for some of the most elite offshore racing monohulls on the planet — the IMOCA 60 (60-foot hull) open class — including more than one-third of the field competing in the 2024-2025 round-the-world Vendée Globe challenge (read CW’s Avel Robotics plant tour).

Hydrofoils function as underwater wings, generating lift to raise the boat hull out of the water and reduce displacement and drag. They were first tested on monohulls in the 1950s, and then more widely adopted on multihulls in the following decades. In the last 10 years, they have become a must-have to secure a podium finish in the premier races. From their first use in the nonstop solo Vendée Globe in 2016-17 — used by about 20% of the fleet — more than 50% of the fleet featured hydrofoils in subsequent races (2020-21 and 2024-25).

The Mini is owned by MiniLab, a collaborative research initiative launched in 2023 that brings together Avel Robotics, ComposiTIC, OpenSea Labs, IRMA, Diab and Victrex to test recyclable and eco-efficient materials and technologies for ocean racing hydrofoils. It is about one-third the size of IMOCA-class racers and has been an incredible living laboratory to explore what full-scale TPC foils could offer when paired with Avel’s advanced and automated manufacturing technology. Through MiniLab, Avel is now testing many of TPC’s most strident claims, including manufacturability, cost and recyclability to pave the way toward use in aerospace. Part of this journey also includes technology to monitor the structural health of the TPC parts in order to give credibility to their durability claims.

Hydrofoil anatomy, performance demands

IMOCA appendages and forces. Forces marked in red vary with boat speed. Source | Cristian Pilo, Modern Wooden Boat

The addition of foils transformed IMOCA racers from displacement monohulls — where a consistent amount of the hull is always in the water — into something closer to sailing hydroplanes.

A modern IMOCA foil is generally C- or S-shaped with a shaft that penetrates the hull and connects to the boat’s actuation system. The elbow, which has the tightest radius of curvature of the foil, transitions the shaft into the lifting section that handles the craft’s hydrodynamics when the foil is fully submerged in the water. The shaft passes through the hull via an integrated foil case, or trunk, which is a heavily reinforced structural box that serves as the primary load path between the foil and the boat. The shaft interacts with upper and lower bearings inside the trunk as hydraulic rams adjust the foil’s angle and move the foil into and out of the water.

IMOCA Paprec 5 sailing with Avel Robotics-manufactured foils. Source | Marin Le Roux via Avel Robotics 

The hydrodynamic section of the foil has two jobs: to produce lift and side force. The lift reduces the hull’s wetted surface and drag, while the side force counteracts the force of the sail by providing righting moment without the use of additional ballast. Because lift scales with the square of speed, the effect compounds: The faster a boat goes, the harder its foils work to keep it going faster still. The foils on 754 lift the boat’s full weight of 1.2 tons, with a safety factor of about 2. The larger the boat, the more demand on the foil.

Out of any part of the hydrofoil, the elbow has the highest risk of failure. It is common to expect a serious knockdown in material properties in this region due to manufacturing challenges imparted by traditional hand layup composite fabrication. The elbow geometry, therefore, has become central to how Avel qualifies a new design. Rather than build and load a full-scale IMOCA foil for every design iteration, Avel leads extensive test campaigns to validate mechanical properties at semi-structural levels at the hardest-to-manufacture, highest stress geometry. Marchandise says the Mini’s foil is built “at exactly the same geometry as an IMOCA elbow — it’s a 1:1 scale of an IMOCA elbow foil.” Since it underwent real racing loads on 754, the smaller-scale foil serves as a realistic proxy for that section of a full-size foil without the cost and risk of putting an unproven geometry straight onto a customer’s boat.

Marchandise explains the engineering challenge of designing a hydrofoil compared to aircraft wings. “Because an airplane has very predictable load cases, you know that you’re going to control speed and go through an element that’s very soft. You don’t have the same level of instability as in the water. In the water, you can’t really control if you’re going to have pure bending or mixed bending and twisting. We have a combination of very complex load cases that are on the foil and a very hard hypothesis when we do the design. The foil is subjected to severe bending and complex load cases, mixed wing bending, twisting and reverse loading as well.” This load case makes simulation of foil performance very challenging, as interlaminar tensile stress is concentrated exactly where the foil curves the most.

Freshly painted thermoplastic composite (TPC) hydrofoil for 754 manufactured by MiniLab. Source | Avel Robotics

The Mini has logged roughly 10,000 nautical miles across 10 races since its current TPC foil came off the line in early spring 2025. This mileage is a genuine fatigue loading dataset for a full-size foil. Furthermore, MiniLab fully controls the platform — from the design to the performance data — making it simple to share the knowledge with any customer, partner or end user.

Avel was able to celebrate a big win for its manufacturing capabilities and high-performance parts with its first customer, skipper Charlie Dalin. The foils for his IMOCA 60 were delivered in September 2019. Dalin won his first race with them that November and placed second in the 2020-21 edition of the Vendée Globe, followed by first place in the 2024-25 edition with Team MACIF. Marchandise recalls that big win for Dalin, Avel and the rest of the Macif racing team. “It was quite moving. Charlie was someone who was very focused, reserved and professional all the time, but [when he won] he was really enthusiastic… we were so happy to be part of this celebration,” says Marchandise.

Late Skipper Charlie Dalin celebrates after his 2024-2025 Vendée Globe win aboard MACIF. Foil manufactured by Avel Robotics can be seen in the foreground. Source | Vincent Curutchet via Avel Robotics 

Dalin passed away in June 2026 after a battle with cancer, which he fought during his Vendée Globe win. Marchandise describes Dalin’s partnership with Avel. “We were very sad to lose this skipper and this incredible human. We met him before we knew he was going to be such a talented skipper in IMOCA. When he walked into the workshop, he would go to everyone and say hello and show his interest, not just in their work but in them as people. He was someone who was very generous and inspiring. We were very moved to learn of his passing. He was the first person to trust Avel and is part of Avel’s success.”

The manufacturing advantage of AFP

One of the keys to the TPC hydrofoil’s success is the AFP manufacturing process developed by Avel Robotics. Marchandise co-founded Avel Robotics in 2017 with partner and mentor Luc Talbourdet. They were motivated to develop composites manufacturing that was not limited by the need for heavy and expensive tooling and that would yield complex parts using automated processes. Marchandise developed Avel’s manufacturing technique around a repurposed Coriolis Composites (Quéven, France) C1 AFP machine.

Avel's first TPC hydrofoil batten produced using the AFP process (top) and TPC qualification test articles being laid up for consolidation and characterization (bottom). Source | Oceanie Bordeaux via Avel Robotics

“I came from prototyping with 3D printers, so for me it was just a new way to manufacture parts without a mold. The composite culture relies on mold[s], but we wanted to manufacture shapes that could not be done with standard techniques. It was a game changer, going into the composite industry with more manufacturing freedom provided by AFP tooling,” Marchandise says.

A less-controlled process than the traditional AFP techniques used in aerospace, Avel’s approach enables it to build complex curved parts without the tooling one would typically expect. The company has scaled from 15-kilogram foils for boat hull lengths under 30 feet to today’s ≈300-kilogram IMOCA foils that are 6-8 meters long. These carry 8-10 tons of load at top speeds, resulting in an extremely complex engineering problem to solve, including a high chance of colliding with floating debris.

AFP can typically steer thermoset unidirectional (UD) prepreg tape into a radius as tight as 2.5 meters without a drop in material performance. Avel’s process qualification strategy informs the company of the impact of a tighter radius and allows it to control the impact of the radius on mechanical performance, and then incorporate that knowledge in the design. Furthermore, Avel’s precise fiber placement technology enables tighter control over fiber angle and course boundaries than hand layup. This allows engineers to orient fiber more closely to the principal load paths and reduces the margin typically reserved for manual placement variability. Ultimately, the structures built by Avel can operate closer to the material’s theoretical strength and stiffness allowables.

Thermoset to TPC

Thermoset epoxy-based composite materials have been the default material for IMOCA foils since the class began foiling, providing an established process and a large dataset to prove performance. TPC materials offer a different set of properties. Damage tolerance and resistance to delamination are significantly different (read “Thermoplastic Composites: Poised to Step Forward”) but TPC also offers assembly not only by adhesive bonding but also welding. Moreover, the ability to be reprocessed opens the pathway to fully recyclable parts.

Indeed, the main driver for Avel’s interest in TPC materials was manufacturing, says Marchandise. “Luc and I have always been trying to find new ways to manufacture composites. After 8 years, we currently have 50% of the [IMOCA foil] market.” Incorporating TPC is, in his view, a competitive edge. When Avel started, “there were seven manufacturers doing very big foils, and now there are only two,” he says. He believes TPC could widen the gap further. “The great feature with AFP compared to hand layup is that you can steer the material because the tape width is narrow,” Marchandise says, “and you can even go further with thermoplastic materials than thermosets — right now we have no quality difference between using a 1-meter radius and a fully straight section with TPC.” This means that the allowables Avel can leverage while using TPC are higher than thermosets in comparable or even less aggressive geometry, which sees a drop beyond the 2.5-meter radius mark.

Marchandise elaborates further, highlighting the manufacturing advantages offered by TPC. “I was drawn to the ability for manufacturing to be interrupted and resumed with TPC, rather than being beholden to an unstoppable chemical reaction during thermoset cure. Flat stacks of material can be stored and formed later, and a finished structure can be reheated and repaired after lamination in ways a thermoset part cannot. All these features, for me, are aligned with what composites in the 21st century will be, including a lot of very complex functions within the parts.”

Working with its partners, Avel developed the MiniLab's TPC foils using undirectional (UD) prepreg tape, thermoformed plates made from a molding compound using recycled Avel scrap materials and foam core to achieve the high load and impact resistance required while reducing waste and improving sustainability and life cycle assessment (LCA) performance. Source | Victrex 

“Diab [Laholm, Sweden] has provided the foam cores that are in MiniLab foils,” says Marchandise. “The foam is made with recycled materials. They are also involved in the foil trunk and the integration of it, so we’ve been testing a lot of different materials that come from them. Diab has a production site in Sweden that’s fully run with non-fossil fuel energy, and they are one of the only manufacturers that have full life cycle analysis [LCA] analysis reports on every material they make. So, they know the life cycle advantage of their products.”

Avel is creating a new process to manufacture the 700-kilogram daggerboards for the 125-foot-long Nomad 7 sailing catamarans. “To our knowledge they are the largest dagger boards ever made, roughly twice the size of my first student flat,” notes Marchandise. “It took a year to manufacture these parts, around 7,000 hours of labor and did not use molds.” The technology used, which is still confidential, incorporates a Diab material that allows Avel to produce sandwich structures that can be cured in an autoclave at high temperatures and pressures, have low moisture uptake and are cost-competitive.

Avel Robotics staff shown in front of a Nomad 7 daggerboard. Source | Avel Robotics 

Victrex (Cleveleys, U.K.) is the inventor and sole manufacturer of the LMPAEK matrix resin used in Avel’s TPC foils. Gilles Larroque, industry manager – transport, spoke highly of Avel’s work with thermoplastic materials. “Adrien benchmarked multiple materials and has done a huge amount of tests,” notes Larroque. “He selected this material because it outperformed all the others. He tested a bunch of thermoplastic materials along with LMPAEK and it was really outperforming the other materials in terms of processability. It was like, okay, let’s shoot for the best and let’s see how far we can go. So that was also kind of his approach and why he’s been adopting LMPAEK and targeting this foil for the moment.”

Marchandise shares that when selecting a thermoplastic material, he aimed to maximize the combination of UD compression strength and interlaminar shear strength with carbon fiber reinforcement. For him, the benchmark was wet-lay epoxy. Out of the material systems he has tested so far, LMPAEK has the winning combination of compression and shear strength regardless of polymer classification. Marchandise estimates that MiniLab is currently achieving about 80% of LMPAEK’s potential in mechanical performance and is seeking to continue to close that gap.

Sustainable foils: Recyclability, EU requirements

“The foil is also an emblematic part for recycling,” notes Marchandise. “It’s key to what we hope to do with the offshore sailing industry — use the TPC foils to do a full product life cycle in a very short-term period — even before aerospace fully adopts this material.”

Avel Robotics carbon footprint per foil. Source | Data from Avel Robotics, plot developed with assistance from AI

“We will achieve the EU-required reduction of 30% way before 2030,” he continues. “In 2022, we were around 66 kilos of CO₂ equivalent per kilo [kg CO₂/kg] of foil manufactured. We did the same analysis in 2025, and now sit at 50 kilos of CO₂ equivalent. This is an improvement of 24% in 3 years.”

He credits the drop in carbon footprint to manufacturing improvements.  “We reduced scrap rates, increased throughput of our AFP robots and improved our autoclave cure cycles. We also began working with Toray Carbon Fibers Europe [Lacq] in the southwest of France; the impact of their fibers is much smaller than fibers that were previously manufactured in the U.S. Beyond that, we switched production from slit tape to towpreg developed with Toray. The towpreg doesn’t need backing film and doesn’t produce waste. We don’t use wide rolls of UD tape that need backing film on both sides or a slitting operation.” Marchandise estimates that current developments will converge in 2027 to help Avel reach an improvement of 32%.  “We then should drop to 45 kg CO₂/kg of foil. We believe we will switch to a fully TPC foil [versus the current 90%] by around 2030.”

Marchandise recognizes MerConcept for its advice and guidance as Avel worked toward reducing the carbon footprint. “Their excellence and skill in LCA helped us make sure we made good decisions while we moved along. They challenged us on the accuracy and way we measured our internal impacts and provided critical review.”

Notably, TPC also create less waste than thermosets, even on an AFP machine. “Just by reducing the amount of waste, we should achieve a reduction of 54% of our CO₂ equivalent per kilo by 2030. That’s without considering recyclability. When I look at our roadmap, a large portion of the calculation for kg CO₂/kg is the material we purchase. Beyond 2030, I can’t imagine any other way to reduce this number than to recycle materials and use materials that can withstand several life cycles. There is a limit of CO₂ reduction that can’t be surpassed unless you recycle. At Avel we hope to reach this challenge within the next 4 years.”

When considering ongoing recyclability and reduced emissions goals, Marchandise looks further afield to how its own TPC hydrofoil materials will be processed, and for what industries. “After such a high-demanding application [offshore racing, aerospace], our strategy is to target those recycled materials for 3D printing, injection molding or plastic sheet forming. The industry that will be targeted will not need a high-performance material [automotive, sporting goods]” he explains. “The difficulty, however, is to identify the mechanical performance of the material that we can produce, and to do it in a way that is economically sustainable. What we have been doing at MiniLab is not sustainable in terms of economics, but we have current projects to go further and address this challenge. We have estimated that on an IMOCA foil that weighs 350 kilos, the application for recycled material would represent approximately 70 kilos, 20% of the mass. On a full-size IMOCA there are 600 kilos of virgin thermoset material that could be replaced by recycled TPC material.”

EU regulatory requirements shaped MiniLab’s approach to achieve a sustainable composite foil: LCA rules only allow a company to claim a carbon-reduction credit for recycled content if that material is reused in the same application it came from. This is a large part of why Avel and MiniLab are solving recycling in-house rather than outsourcing it.

Foil Infinity, the MiniLab initiative behind this work, targets a fully recyclable racing foil by 2030. Today, 10% of MiniLab-built foils are recycled material. Avel uses manufacturing scrap, offcuts and milling dust, processed by ComposiTIC into a recycled material. That material is then consolidated under a hot press into panels of molding compound. These panels are then used exclusively in the foil’s secondary, non-load-bearing structure in the leading and trailing edges (see TPC foil diagram in “Thermoset to TPC” section). These regions are also the most prone to impact damage and benefit from the use of tough thermoplastic discontinuous fiber composites. The primary load path of the foil remains in virgin material. Recycling the scrap back into the virgin material’s original application meets EU regulatory requirements to claim carbon footprint reduction in an LCA.

Marchandise says that Avel’s success has been heavily impacted by  ComposiTIC and University of South Brittany, which “are key drivers of technological development in our region. We would not be where we are without them, nor would we be so efficient in developing TPC foils.” He also thanks Vinent Keryvin, professor at University of South Brittany, for his expertise when Avel was developing its AFP process to maximize mechanical properties, especially performance in compression.

SHM for foiling

Recycled scrap converted to material for leading and trailing edge of a TPC hydrofoil. Source | Avel Robotics 

Regardless of the foil material, once it is installed Avel carefully monitors the health of the structure with fiber optic sensors. Fiber optic sensors are used to measure strain, using technology and data acquisition from Pixel sur Mer (Lorient, France). “Pixel sur Mer is an expert on onboard systems. They provided us with fiber optics and all the system to get the acquisition of this data,” says Marchandise. “We know more about what LMPAEK can withstand across a very long life cycle of a product thanks to their system. We’ve been working with them on a lot of the different foils we manufacture.” MiniLab has been able to compare the sensor data to their performance prediction models with great correlation.

In addition to fiber optic sensors, acoustic emission sensors were also installed in the TPC foils for 754. The sensors were co-developed directly between Dupuy de Lome Research Institute (IRDL, Ploemeur, France), a research group at the University of South Brittany, and Avel.

“Acoustic emission sensors have been used for metallic structures for 35 years, and they have been used on composites for about 20,” notes Marchandise. “With these embedded sensors within the foils, we believe we can detect if there were some cracks, delamination, etc. during the foil’s life. It gives us a direct answer whether the foil is in good health or not, which is very different than fiber optic sensors, because fiber optics give you the level of strain and then load that the foil is experiencing, so it’s less direct information than acoustic emission sensors can provide.”

Marchandise points out that, taken together, these sensor systems have significance beyond ocean racing. “Using acoustic sensors could help aeronautical customers that want to quickly develop a new application and certify the part. For example, with a helicopter blade, we stop its life after a number of flight hours, but there’s no validation that the material has actually fatigued. It’s just based on statistics. With fiber optic and acoustic sensors, you could determine whether to extend its life cycle or shorten it after an unexpected event.”

The 2024-25 Vendée Globe campaign supplied the largest real-world performance dataset Avel has seen. It manufactured foils for nine of the 25 foil-equipped boats in that race, logging about 250,000 nautical miles total, all captured with fiber optic sensors.

From ocean to aerospace and defense

Avel’s move into aerospace and defense isn’t a pivot so much as a return. In fact, Marchandise and Talbourdet built the company’s manufacturing approach around aerospace manufacturing already used to build large commercial aircraft, including Coriolis AFP machines used by Airbus and Boeing. So this strategy was there from the beginning, says Loeva Malacarne, head of sales and business development, who joined Avel in 2021 after 11 years at aerospace firm Safran. Avel’s first aerospace customer was with Swiss aircraft manufacturer Pilatus in 2023, followed by different projects with Airbus and ArianeGroup (a prototype built for ArianeGroup’s satellite dispenser that Avel exhibited at JEC World 2026) and is now working on projects in the space and advanced air mobility (AAM) realms.

After several years of discussions with aerospace customers, Malacarne was able to get serious traction for Avel with Aura Aero (Toulouse, France). Aura’s first product is a two-seat training aircraft, which the company originally certified with conventional propulsion and then later with an electric propulsion version.

Aura’s next product is slated to be a 19-seat aircraft designed as a replacement for the ATR 72. This aircraft will have hybrid propulsion supplied by Safran. Avel is building the wings and tailplanes for that program, with first flight targeted for the end of 2027. To support this work, Avel is building a second Lorient facility dedicated to aerospace production, to be operational by 2028. The new facility will add more than 3,000 square meters of production capability to its original 800-square meter site and will house its full-scale wing and tail plane production for Aura.

Avel is further diversifying into defense via partnerships with larger OEMs and Tier suppliers. Malacarne notes that the defense timeline pairs well with Avel’s fast development capabilities. “It matches our habits of doing things very quickly,” she says. “A project generally starts, and 6 months later it’s delivered.” Avel is also engaged with AAM customers where design cycle and timelines also align with Avel’s ability to move fast and deliver high-quality results.

Bringing TPC to the sky

Marchandise believes that the effort Avel have put into developing sustainable TPC foil technology will be translated to higher-stake aerospace parts and add to the performance benefits of TPC materials. He sees Avel’s AFP-steering capability extending well beyond marine. “For example, manufacturing TPC window frames and pans for aircraft with a hot press requires laminate blanks with a high level of steering, and mastering these steering parameters is of key importance.  This could be transposable to multiple aerospace, defense and AAM structures.”

“We will be able to start recycling the first TPC foils we manufacture before we see the first wing on a plane flying with these materials,” he says.  This was part of Avel’s strategy from the beginning — to prove itself in high-performance offshore sailing and then target aerospace, providing comprehensive datasets and differentiated, advanced manufacturing technologies. Now, with its achievements in sustainable TPC materials and primary structures, Avel is bringing even further reduced carbon footprint technology and innovative composites to the skies.

About the Author

 

Claire Steggall-Murphy

Claire Steggall-Murphy brings more than 20 years of experience to her work as a consultant in the composites industry. She specializes in aerospace, application development, material and process qualification, and thermoplastic composites.

Source | Bally Ribbon Mills (BRM)

Bally Ribbon Mills (BRM, Bally, Pa., U.S.) is showcasing its high-quality, high-performance composite products. BRM experts will be on hand to discuss the company’s 3D woven joints, thermal protection systems (TPS) and other 3D structures.

BRM was named a 2016 JEC Innovation Award winner in the “Space” category, recognizing the company’s contributions to advanced composite technology for space-related applications. The award underscores BRM’s longstanding expertise in developing engineered woven solutions that help meet critical performance requirements while supporting lightweight, efficient composite structures.

Using 3D continuous weaving, BRM creates new joint structures and improves existing designs. The company’s 3D woven joints are available in Pi (π), double-T, H and other complex net shapes. Designed to deliver strength, durability and structural integrity, these woven shapes help reduce component weight and cost without sacrificing performance.

Because reinforcement is integrated throughout all three dimensions of the weave, BRM’s 3D woven structures support load paths across joined substructures. The architecture of each woven shape can be tailored to the needs of the overall structure and its individual components.

BRM’s 3D woven composites are also well suited for aerospace TPS. These mission-critical components are used in demanding heat shield applications, including space exploration vehicles. By varying yarn types, density, thickness, width and resin systems, BRM can develop customizable woven composite solutions for specific thermal and structural requirements.

In partnership with NASA, BRM developed 3D orthogonally woven 3DMAT quartz material for Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle compression pads. The material was named the 2023 NASA Government Invention of the Year. BRM’s work with NASA demonstrates the value of collaboration between the agency and U.S. small businesses with specialized technical capabilities that support current and future exploration efforts.

Beyond thermal protection applications, BRM’s 3D woven components support aircraft engine and other structural applications. Replacing traditional metallic parts with woven carbon fiber composite structures reduces weight and life cycle costs while meeting stringent manufacturing and performance requirements.

SW North America’s BA Space5-12H large-format machining center is designed for productive, flexible manufacturing of large, complex components. Built around a large work envelope, powerful two-axis machining head and automation-ready architecture, the platform is designed for manufacturers producing demanding components that require size, precision and production efficiency.

The BA Space5-12H combines a large work envelope with power and flexibility for demanding applications. It includes the following specifications:

• 4,800 × 1,800 × 875 mm work area
• 5,000 × 1,800 mm pallet size supporting loads up to 4,000 kg per pallet
• Symmetrical two-axis fork head with direct-drive torque technology
• A/C-axis configuration with ±120 degrees on the A-axis and 360 degrees on the C-axis
• HSK-A63 milling spindle with speeds up to 30,000 rpm and 120 kW of power
• Monoblock machine bed and gantry design developed for large-component machining

The BA Space5-12H was developed with automation as a core part of its manufacturing concept. Its single-load configuration can be incorporated into larger automated manufacturing lines, giving manufacturers greater flexibility to scale production and make more efficient use of production capacity.

For aerospace manufacturers, the combination of the machine’s large work area and two-axis head is designed to provide the flexibility needed to produce complex structural and interior components. Its automation capabilities can also help manufacturers increase output and make better use of skilled production teams. Digital twin technology enables processes to be simulated and validated digitally before manufacturers commit materials or machining time to production.

Daher’s Highly Loaded Thermoplastic Wing Rib program has produced and tested a 64-ply thick single-aisle aircraft wing rib comprising two L-shaped components produced by its patented Direct Stamping process and joined using LIST’s patented infrared (IR) welding process. Source (All Images) | Daher and (lower left) LIST

Airbus’ next-generation single aisle (NGSA) program is on track for launch in 2030 with entry into service by 2035-2040. The preparation program, called eAction, includes “a lot of research and technology development, comparison of technology solutions, pre-projects and simulations,” says Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, noting ongoing work with partners to review options for wings, fuselage, propulsion and industrial systems.

This activity includes thermoplastic composites (TPC), discussed in Aviation Week’s article, “Composite aerostructures suppliers pitch thermoplastics, automation for next narrowbody.” It explains that TPC offers shorter production cycles and welded assembly requiring just ≈15 minutes per join versus multi-hour thermoset (TS) cure cycles. Tier 1 aerostructures supplier Daher (Nantes, France) is highlighted in the article and is also a partner in the Spider research project — part of the French government-funded CORAC program — targeting stamping presses capable of handling parts up to 4 × 3 meters. Daher is also developing TPC pylon fairings, made by converting an end-of-life A380 engine pylon cowl into a smaller panel for A320neo pylons. This project — a collaboration with Airbus, Tarmac Aerosave and Toray Advanced Composites — demonstrates how Airbus also sees TPC as a path to circularity for composite aerostructures.

The baseline composite wing for NGSA could include TPC ribs in a TS box. This approach is already used in A320 elevators and more such hybrid structures are expected (see “The era of TPC”). Daher has produced TPC ribs for Airbus’ Wing of Tomorrow (WOT) program, which has completed three 17-meter ground test demonstrators. After exploring the advantages of increased wingspan and more than 100 manufacturing and assembly technologies, the WOT has now entered a flight test phase.

Targeting a rib better optimized for the longer, slender wing shapes WOT is now testing, Daher launched the Highly Loaded Thermoplastic Wing Rib project in 2021. This project, part of the CORAC (Conseil pour la Recherche Aéronautique Civile) iniative funded by the DGAC (French Civil Aviation Authority), was achieved with partners Victrex (Cleveleys, U.K.), Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg), Cetim (Saint-Étienne, France) and AniForm Engineering B.V. (Enschede, Netherlands). The award-winning rib features up to 64 plies (12 millimeters) of unidirectional (UD) carbon fiber-reinforced LMPAEK polymer material from Victrex and integrates two key technologies: Daher’s patented Direct Stamping — which eliminates the consolidation step after layup — and the LIST-patented process for infrared (IR) welding.

Dimensions and design features of Daher's thick thermoplastic composite (TPC) rib including ply drops.

Compared to a machined aluminum reference, the 1,400 × 380 × 12-millimeter-thick TPC welded rib with varying thickness reduces weight by 22%. Compared to a TPC bolted rib, it reduces the production cycle by 25% and cost by 15% while meeting the high‑rate (75-100 aircraft/month) targeted for NGSA and other future aircraft. It also reduces emissions by 12.5 tonnes of CO_₂ per rib over a single‑aisle aircraft’s lifetime, and Daher has already demonstrated recyclability/circularity with Airbus on the A320 pylons and in the carbon fiber/PPS brake pedals for its TBM general aviation aircraft, made using waste from its production of stamped TPC clips and brackets for the Airbus A350.

Why a thick rib program?

“Because we were one of the last partners to enter the WOT project, we had 2 years less than the other partners to design and produce a rib,” says Dominique Bailly, director of R&D for Daher. “Thus, we were more conservative on what could be done to optimize that part.” Daher was actually the first partner to deliver TPC wing ribs and vacuum bag-only (VBO) TS spars to Airbus U.K. for the full-scale wing demonstrator at the end of 2020. “But we knew there were improvements possible in the rib’s design, weight, cost and producibility for high production rates. That’s why we launched another effort to continue optimizing the initial results we achieved in the WOT, but on our own.”

Because this was not an Airbus program, the team decided to start with a generic metallic wing rib based on a Daher design. “First, we performed the analysis to optimize that metallic rib,” notes Bailly, “and then we used that as our basis to develop a more optimized TPC rib.”

Stamped and welded thick TPC rib prior to testing.

Why is it so thick (up to 64 plies/12 millimeters)? “Composites are key to achieving the new long and thin wing designs being tested for NGSA, which enable the reduced drag and fuel consumption being demanded,” says Bailly. “This new rib has been developed to meet those goals and it will see more load than ribs used in aircraft today. Our challenge was to make the same part in TPC but with improved weight, production rate and cost. And even though we’ve created a structure with 64 plies, we’ve also proven it weighs less and generates less CO₂ than the metallic rib. That also is the power of optimized composites and welding — even with the same loads, the machined metallic rib is still 22% heavier.”

The resulting thick TPC rib has received awards, but Bailly says Daher sees where it can still be improved and is pursuing further developments.

Materials and design

Performance in welding and forming were key considerations in Daher’s choice for the TPC material. “The Daher WOT wing rib design is full of fasteners,” says Bailly. “But we have the ability to address that, being one of the few companies in the world that can weld highly structural TPC parts. We wanted to use this ability to eliminate or significantly reduce fasteners, and also incorporate our patented Direct Stamping process to reduce cycle time and cost.”  

“At the beginning of the project, we had studied the different resins on the market, including PEEK and PAEK from a variety of suppliers,” explains Martin Denize, composite R&T project manager at Daher. “LMPAEK was the best candidate for weldability but also regarding degradation versus time at process temperature. The Victrex material was our best choice for this program and we fully characterized it to have the input data needed for simulation.”

With partner AniForm, Daher completed simulations to predict warping (top), buckling (bottom) and other defects, including deformation of parts after stamping.

Process and part simulation were indeed vital, aided by project partner AniForm. “We’ve worked with them for 5-6 years,” says Denize. “Their model to predict defects in stamped TPC parts is well-developed for fabric materials and is advancing UD materials.” Years ago, as Daher began manufacturing more complex geometry parts, it wanted to accurately predict defects like wrinkles. In this project, Daher not only worked with AniForm on further developing defect prediction, but also a new model to predict deformation of the parts after stamping.

“We often talk about springback,” Denize explains, “for example, the way the angle of an L- or U-shape will be more closed or open compared to the theoretical part due to thermal stress during molding. This AniForm model helps to predict these effects as well as any warpage or twist in the part.” For the moment, this model is still in development, he notes. “We have a research agreement with AniForm to help advance this capability for their commercial software.”

Development of the thick TPC rib iterated through several loops between the design team and the process team. “We began with a simple L-shaped part,” says Denize, “because our rib is basically two stamped L-shapes welded together. We first modeled only one of these, but featuring the high thickness — which is not constant but varies — including ply drops and pickups. We then progressed to warpage prediction for the full-scale rib. Next, we tested the rib in compression, shear and for buckling resistance, and refined the design based on the results. The AniForm software also helped us to make certain choices because we could see that some geometries were not able to be stamped or had a high risk of defects. Using the UD material meant that not every shape could be stamped. So, we again refined the design and the stamping process.”

Direct Stamping

Daher has developed its Direct Stamping for 15 years including 13 patents.

Daher has produced stamped TPC parts for the A350 for 15 years. During that time, it has also developed and continued to refine its Direct Stamping process including applications and awards for 13 patents.

Automated fiber placement (AFP) is used to create the flat blank via fast layup that minimizes waste, explains Bailly. “We then use the stamping press to create the 3D shape and finish consolidation simultaneously. But the AFP parameters must be tuned to fit with the stamping. We don’t just lay a flat preform and put it in the press. Compared to conventional stamping, everything is different with Direct Stamping — from the part design to the AFP process to the way you stamp. All of the parameters must be aligned to reach the required level of quality and mechanical performance.”

Automated fiber placement (AFP) before Direct Stamping integrates Daher’s patented slit tape transfer solution.

“We produced a lot of reference samples with a classic stamping process using oven consolidation,” explains Denize, “and we compared those to Direct Stamping at every step in order to tune the AFP and stamping parameters to have the same performance. We also had to optimize Direct Stamping for high thickness; the process works easily for thin parts but had to be modified for these thick parts. This included a campaign to validate the inner quality and mechanical performance of the part.”

“We also patented a smart way to transfer the parts from the oven to the press that eliminates the need for polyimide film,” says Denize. “We thus improved the buy-to-fly ratio by generating less material waste but also by minimizing the need for such auxiliary materials required for vacuum bagging plus sealants required for fasteners.”

IR welding

“We knew we wanted to use welding,” says Bailly, “but also that our in-house solution for induction welding would be very challenging for the thick laminate. As the web of the rib is flat, we began discussions with LIST, which had proposed IR welding as a solution for large, flat surfaces.”

KVE Composites and Daher exhibited a full-scale welded TPC torsion box at JEC Word 2024. Source | “Thermoplastic composite welding advances ...” and CW

He points out that the induction welding Daher performed on the full-scale torsion box (based on the company’s TBM aircraft) exhibited at JEC World 2024 was a maximum width of 20 millimeters. “That works well for welding complex surfaces, but IR welding seemed a better fit for larger surfaces to achieve high-quality welds with a minimum number of welding passes,” he explains.

After heating both surfaces to be welded, the IR lamps are removed, the press is closed quickly and the parts are welded. 

Bailly says IR welding is automated and robust — both important characteristics for high-rate production — controlled by its key process parameters: temperature, time and pressure. “The basics are simple,” he explains. “You have two parts fixtured in a press — one on bottom and one on top. IR lamps are placed in between to heat both surfaces. You then remove the lamps, quickly close the press and the parts are welded.” Masks are used to isolate heat to only the surfaces being welded on each part, with general weld time between 5 and 20 minutes for the Daher thick rib.

The team will look at further industrializing the machine setup, says Bailly, “but for welding flat surfaces to each other, this is a good solution because you don’t have to push the power through the material thickness — you only heat the surface — so the thickness of the two parts does not have a big impact on the time required to heat the parts. For this type of thick rib, it’s perfect. It could also work well for smaller parts.”

It does have limits, he concedes, such as part size and shape complexity. “You still must apply pressure during welding to have the surfaces in contact,” he explains, “and when you push vertically on a curved surface, the pressure will vary due to the angle. You also need to have high-quality components with accurate geometry and collect all the process data for statistical process control.”

Bailly points out there is currently no confirmed nondestructive test (NDT) method for the interface of welded joints. “This is an important step. There are some prototype solutions to verify that you have the right level of adhesion between the two parts in the weld line, but we have identified other possible solutions and are working to evaluate those.”

Process integration, testing and wave design

The biggest challenge in this development was maturing the Direct Stamping and IR welding processes for this thick part, says Bailly. Denize agrees, noting that with IR welding, “we started at TRL 1. We wanted to end with a full-scale part that would pass mechanical testing, so we had to adapt the processes for this ambitious rib design and then validate the part performance and quality throughout.”

“We also validated the quality and mechanical performance of the material at every step of the testing pyramid,” he continues, “from coupon size to level two and three samples for stress, up to subscale, then full scale. We have done the complete test pyramid, which you don’t see very often. You see a lot of demonstrators, but not a lot of information about testing and performance.”

“Results from our CARAC TP program enabled us to directly target the right process windows for AFP and stamping,” says Denize, “reducing the number of tests we had to perform to reach the desired performance. It supported our need to go fast in this project but has also helped in other projects. We are always looking at the CARAC TP results to have a starting point for tests, and also to help choose the right materials, including ensuring they can withstand the environmental constraints of the part, such as higher temperatures near the engine.”

The rib design evolved to include the wave shape in the lower L-shaped part and top contour that follows holes for systems installation, eliminating extra material and reducing weight.

“For the IR welding, we completed the whole test pyramid again to validate the process across the part,” says Denize. “Before we reached the final shape and weld design, we evaluated different welding thickness jumps and wave shapes in the lower L-shaped part. We also evolved that part’s contoured design to follow holes for systems installation in parallel with the welding tests. Our goal was to validate the process, but we were also optimizing the quantity of thermoplastic material via the shape to have just the right amount of material and where we needed it.”

Denize explains that extra material and length would be needed if the rib used fasteners, “because of the distance required between the fastener and the contour of the part. But you don’t need that when using welding to join the parts. So, you not only eliminate the weight of the fasteners, but also the extra material required.”

Machining of mouse holes

Rendering of machining mouse holes into welded, thick TPC ribs. Source | Daher

Machining system access holes into the thick, welded TPC rib was also a challenge. As explained by Daher composite machining expert, Sébastien Louvel, in an April 2026 article, conventional approaches, including tooling that relies solely on vacuum clamping, no longer work on these parts, where cutting forces can reach 1,000 newtons.

“They [parts] also remain highly sensitive to vibrations,” he says, noting that poor clamping quickly leads to degraded quality or even tool breakage. Vibration control becomes even more critical for high‑rate production. All parameters must be considered, and a holistic process approach is needed, which includes cutting assistance, chip management, instrumentation and data collection. “Based on physical measurements during preliminary trials, we specified the equipment now installed at our Shap’in TechCenter,” says Louvel, “and this system is fully instrumented to prepare for future production monitoring.”

This is essential, he adds, because small‑diameter cutters are not suitable when machining 12- to 24-millimeter thicknesses. “Instead, we use tools with diameters of 12 or 16 millimeters. These are more heavily loaded and more expensive, so monitoring is key to ensure tool life and process stability. Our industrial production today is based on proven tooling designs validated on numerous prototypes to guarantee reliability, stability and repeatability without vibration issues or tool failures.”

Full part testing and certification

One end goal for Daher’s thick rib development program is a full part mechanical test to prove its performance and parity with the classic stamping process, notes Denize. Cetim was the partner for this full-scale testing.

 

 

Tested at Cetim, the full rib was subjected to simultaneous compression and shear load via actuators, painted for digital image correlation and equipped with numerous sensors.

Initial results in June showed the part survived beyond ultimate load without failure under combined loading conditions representative of what this rib would see in a single-aisle aircraft wing. The rib was subjected simultaneously to 25 tonnes of compression and 25 tonnes of shear on a test bench co-engineered with Daher and built by Cetim specifically for the program.

“The part was fixed at its foot or base and also on the side to represent the spars in a wing,” says Denize. “It was fixed on the top edges as well, while actuators at 90° and 45° introduced compression and shearing in the rib. Numerous sensors were placed on the part, including strain gauges and acoustic emission sensors, plus a camera to perform stereo correlation [digital image correlation], which will enable us to eventually replace some of the sensors with a camera. We are using all of this data to analyze the breakage in the part and compare the results with our stress modeling.”

 

Analysis of the tested rib — including nondestructive testing (NDT) before and after loading (top) — confirmed cohesive rupture at the welded surfaces (bottom) where an acoustic emission signal was detected at ultimate load.

This analysis is ongoing, says Bailly. “Our team was able to isolate and separate the small welded area  (about 250 square millimeters) where an acoustic signal was detected at ultimate load. Analysis of the surfaces here confirm that the rupture was cohesive — as in coupon-level testing — and was located in the area with the highest theoretical load. This result is very promising for the IR welding technology, and we will provide more details and discussion in our presentation at ITHEC 2026.”

For now, only static tests for the full rib have been performed. “But we will also have to do some fatigue testing,” says Denize. “We are currently doing this type of testing at the sample level on welded coupons made using the test setup of KVE Composites, a Daher subsidiary specialized in advanced TPC technologies. We then subject those to cyclic loading. Eventually, this will also be needed for a full-scale welded rib.”

“We have also been working with the authorities to see how we can certify this design,” says Bailly. The thick TPC rib program was aligned with European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) CS-25 certification requirements for large turbine-powered aircraft. “The test pyramids we’ve completed in this program and this full part mechanical testing are the first steps. However, if we had to certify this part today, we would still be required to add chicken rivets. So, we are working to see what is the actual amount of rivets that we would have to add. So far, we’ve determined it’s only around 10, so that’s not a big weight and cost impact. But we are still working on it. We also want to build as much design and process intelligence as possible for the next generation of short- to medium-range aircraft.”

Further optimization, functionalization

With the full-scale rib testing now complete, the project is in its final phase, comprising analysis of the test results and correlation to the modeling, says Denize. “We will then compile a final technical analysis as well as an economic analysis of what it costs to produce the part. We’ve already shown a 25% reduction in production time compared to traditional consolidation using oven or autoclave and assembly using bolts or rivets. This innovative design and its process technologies also require less energy.”

“The actual cycle time depends on a lot of different factors,” says Bailly, “including installation of the part in the press, heating, cooling and demolding. So far, we have used a prototype setup for R&D, but we are now looking at how to automate and accelerate some of these phases for industrialization. Still, if you look at the speed Direct Stamping offers and compare what we’ve demonstrated in the welded rib to the multiple steps required for fasteners — drilling holes, cleaning them, inspection, applying sealant, installing fasteners and verifying position, etc. — our approach offers significant time and cost savings.”

Daher has already demonstrated recycling, converting scrap from its production of TPC bracket and clips into pellets containing 56% carbon which are then used for overmolding and injection molding, such as this brake pedal which replaces aluminum for its TBM turboprop aircraft.

“But we are improving the large thick rib design even further,” says Denize, “including overmolding using recycled materials from TPC clips and bracket production. This is part of our broader strategy for TPC parts, which includes not only zero-waste solutions in production but also recycling end-of-life parts.”

“Our first step is with a smaller, stamped thick rib,” adds Bailly, “which opens new possibilities for optimization because the overmolding enables different functionalizations.”

“This large thick rib we have achieved represents a significant step forward,” says Denize. “It helps to enable the innovative wing architectures necessary for NGSA and speeds wing assembly thanks to its simple design. Daher’s ability to produce very thick-walled parts could also help to reduce the quantities of wing components necessary for future aircraft.”

“We have always been a strong partner for OEMs,” says Bailly, “and have continued to invest in technology and production readiness for the parts required in future empennage, fuselage, wing and movables.” He notes Daher is developing a production plant digital twin for thick and large TPC parts for future large commercial aircraft and amassing a foundation for certification. “We are also advancing fast-cure TS, machining and inspection — the technologies needed for high-rate aircraft production now and in the future.”

Mikrosam Libra AFP system Installed at USC’s McNAIR Center. Source | McNAIR Center

The McNAIR Center for Aerospace Innovation and Research at the University of South Carolina’s Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing has announced the installation and immediate availability of a Mikrosam (Prilep, North Macedonia) Libra Multifunctional Robotic System at its 42,000-square-foot advanced manufacturing facility in Columbia, South Carolina. Procurement of this equipment was made possible through Office of the Secretary of War Manufacturing Technology Program funding with program management support provided by Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane.

The McNAIR Center serves as a multidisciplinary hub for advanced engineering and manufacturing, supporting aerospace, mechanical, electrical, chemical, industrial and biomedical engineering initiatives. The facility enables service work, applied research, technology demonstrations and workforce development in partnership with industry and government stakeholders.

In collaboration with Composite Automation (Cape Coral, Fla., U.S.) and Mikrosam, the McNAIR Center has installed an 8-tow, ¼-inch automated fiber placement (AFP) head equipped with laser and infrared (IR) heating, integrated onto a KUKA (Augsburg, Germany) Titan L750 robot mounted on a 10.6-meter linear rail. The system includes 1.2 × 1.2-meter flat oil-heated tooling, as well as headstock and tailstock configurations capable of accommodating tooling up to 4.3 meters in length and 1.8 meters in diameter.

Adapatability, flexibility, data and digital control

The Mikrosam system features an AFP head, advanced controls and large-format capability, but its defining characteristic is adaptability: any end effector can be mounted and controlled from the platform, enabling the McNAIR Center and its partners to apply the software and machine to other, novel applications. In addition to AFP heads, the system can integrate mixed-supplier or in-house-developed end effectors for applications such as thermoplastic welding, automated inspection and other advanced manufacturing processes, supporting highly versatile robotic composites manufacturing.

The system during factory acceptance test at Mikrosam. Source | Mikrosam 

At the core of this capability is Mikrosam’s multi-material AFP head, which enables precise placement of multiple slit tapes with individual tow control, including on-the-fly cutting, restarting and steering, allowing accurate fiber deposition across complex geometries while maintaining consistent material handling and placement quality. The system is fully capable of processing high-temperature thermoplastics and is equally mature for thermoset materials and dry fiber preforms; McNAIR is also interested in using the equipment to test novel material systems not yet used with AFP. Processing thermoset, thermoplastic and dry fiber materials on a single platform offers advantages for both research and industrial environments, enabling rapid material qualification, process development and transition to scalable manufacturing.

“Our AFP systems are designed to process multiple material systems on a single platform while maintaining precise control over critical parameters such as temperature, compaction and fiber placement,” emphasizes Samoil Samak, general director at Mikrosam. “The integration of closed-loop thermal control and high-power laser heating allows users to explore thermoplastic processing at a level of consistency and repeatability that is essential for industrial adoption.”

Like all composites manufacturing systems at the McNAIR Center, the Mikrosam AFP platform is fully integrated with comprehensive data acquisition and power monitoring systems. Through Mikrosam’s control and software ecosystem, it enables continuous monitoring and recording of key process parameters — including temperature, compaction pressure, layup speed and material use — ensuring full traceability and process transparency. These tools support real-time evaluation of processing parameters and energy inputs, providing immediate feedback on how layup conditions influence deposition quality, placement rates and final part performance, supporting both research validation and production-scale process optimization.

McNAIR expects the AFP and integrated robotic system to play a critical role in next-generation advanced manufacturing initiatives, particularly in high-rate thermoplastic composite (TPC) production and large-scale structural applications. The Mikrosam system’s modular and multi-process design significantly expands its application potential across multiple industries.

Additionally, the Roctool (Le Bourget-du-Lac, France) induction-heated platens — installed at McNAIR earlier in 2026 — can be used as 762 × 1016-millimeter heated tooling for out-of-autoclave (OOA) consolidation and integrated AFP laydown processes, further strengthening the Center’s ability to support rapid manufacturing workflows and advanced thermoplastic processing strategies.

Industry collaboration and access

The McNAIR Center is making the Mikrosam Libra AFP System available to industry and government partners for:

• Workforce development and hands-on training.
• Contract manufacturing and technical services.
• Applied research and development.
• Secure research and development projects.
• Process demonstration and validation.
• Advanced manufacturing scale-up initiatives.

Providing availability to adaptable robotic systems with advanced AFP capability, multi-material processing, closed-loop thermal control, modular tooling flexibility and integrated data monitoring, continues to expand the McNAIR Center’s role as a national resource for advanced composite and aerospace manufacturing innovation.

“Advanced composites manufacturing is entering a phase where flexibility and process integration are becoming just as important as performance,” adds Samak. “With this system, the McNAIR Center now has a platform that enables collaboration between academia, industry and government, accelerating the transition from research to real-world manufacturing.”

Industry and government partners interested in using the Mikrosam AFP system for service, research, development or workforce training are encouraged to contact the McNAIR Center for Aerospace Innovation and Research at the University of South Carolina.

Source | Getty Images

Aerospace metal finisher Valence Surface Technologies LLC (El Segundo, California) has announced the acquisition of Cametoid Technologies Inc. (South Windsor, Connecticut), which is said to be the largest provider of ion vapor deposition (IVD) surface treatment to the North American aerospace and defense markets. Holding difficult-to-obtain industry approvals and operating six IVD chambers, Cametoid provides IVD coatings to manufacturers across the North American aerospace, defense and energy supply chains. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Acquired and operated by CEO John Adams II since 2010, Cametoid has built a reputation for providing complex, high-quality IVD coating services for mission-critical defense and commercial aerospace and energy applications. Cametoid’s core capabilities include IVD coatings for steel and titanium alloys, stainless steel and aluminum, as well as a custom process for coating nonmetallic parts such as ceramics and composites, including PEEK and PEKK. The company also provides nondestructive testing, salt spray testing, blasting, complex masking, chromate conversion and paint.

Cametoid’s team operates out of a single facility in South Windsor, with capacity for future growth and expansion. Adams and Cametoid’s management team and workforce will remain with the organization following the transaction.

“This acquisition is Valence’s third in 12 months and bolsters our position as the largest provider of complex surface treatments to the North American aerospace and defense supply chain,” says David Camilleri, chairman of Valence. “Adding IVD technology meaningfully expands our capabilities with a highly specialized, non-toxic corrosion protection process for mission-critical components and complements Valence’s already extensive suite of surface treatment and coating solutions.”

Valence is majority-owned by ATL Partners and British Columbia Investment Management Corp., which invested in Valence in June 2019 to accelerate its strategic initiatives and support continued expansion. 

The transaction was sourced by Valence on a proprietary basis. Goodwin served as legal counsel to Valence and Wiggin & Dana served as legal counsel to Cametoid.

The Highly Loaded Thermoplastic Wing Rib demonstrator hasn’t emerged in isolation. Rather, it is a direct product of the R&D infrastructure Daher (Nantes, France) built specifically for this kind of work.

Together with Victrex, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), Cetim, AniForm and the DGAC (French Civil Aviation Authority), the Daher wing rib is 64 plies thick — 12 millimeters — and made from carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastics, assembled from two L-shaped components welded into a T-shape.

Two processes make this possible:

• Direct stamping (Daher-patented) eliminates the consolidation step between layup and stamping, cutting cycle time and cost.
• Infrared welding (LIST-patented) joins the two halves without a single rivet.

When compared to aluminum, bolted assemblies, the TPC wing rib is 22% lighter, with 15% lower assembly cost, a 25% shorter production cycle and fully recyclable. The project earned a 2026 JEC Innovation Award.

The rib, along with its direct stamping and infrared welding processes, was developed out of Daher’s Shap’in TechCenter in Saint-Aignan-de-Grandlieu, France, a facility the company opened in December 2022 to co-locate its design, materials and manufacturing teams alongside its composites production plant next door. As Daher intellectual property manager Michael Hugon explained during a CW plant tour of the facility in 2023, the goal was to create “an excellence center to develop the innovative composite technologies that will make tomorrow’s eco-efficient products possible.”