Source | AeroVironment

AeroVironment Inc. (AV, Arlington, Va., U.S.), a global defense technology innovation company, has recently been awarded a $20 million Ceramics Advanced Materials and Processes (CAMP) contract by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, U.S.) Materials and Manufacturing Directorate to advance next-gen ceramic and ceramic matrix composite (CMC) materials for extreme aerospace and defense applications supporting the U.S. Air and Space Forces. 

Under the 39-month contract, AV’s materials experts will partner with AFRL scientists and engineers to accelerate development, speed up field advanced capabilities and strengthen mission readiness while reducing life cycle costs. The team will apply additive manufacturing (AM), 3D printing and sensor integration techniques to create lightweight, thermally resilient structures — such as high speed aerodynamic vehicles, turbine engines, rocket propulsion systems, transparent armor, thermal protection tiles and nozzle extensions.

Research conducted under the CAMP program will also advance ceramics through precursor synthesis and processing, novel fabrication and design methods, microstructural characterization and advanced modeling to better predict performance and durability. The effort will span the full life cycle of material innovation, integrating embedded sensors for real-time health monitoring and developing multifunctional ceramics for aerospace, space, energy and defense applications — from satellite propulsion and helicopter armor to ultra-efficient energy systems and advanced sensors. 

“Through the CAMP program, we’re not just developing better ceramics — we’re creating the materials foundation for the future of flight and space operations,” says Dr. John Hogan, vice president of defense and interagency service at AV.

AeroVironment materials have played roles in space applications like the Mars Engenuity helicopter, and aerospace-focused applications like the Puma 3 AE tactical UAS and various HAPS aircraft (HAWK30).

A320 Family final assembly line at the Jean-Luc Lagardère facility in Toulouse. Source | Airbus

Airbus (Toulouse, France) has inaugurated its second modernized A320 Family final assembly line (FAL) at the Jean-Luc Lagardère facility in Toulouse. 

“This facility provides the necessary flexibility and capacity to meet strong market demand, especially for the A321neo, and supports our production ramp-up trajectory towards 75 A320 Family aircraft a month,” says Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury. “Operating in coordination with our assembly sites in Hamburg, Mobile and Tianjin, this advanced line is part of our commitment to deliver aircraft of the highest quality standards to our customers globally.”

To support the A320 Family production ramp-up trajectory, and following the recent expansions in Mobile and Tianjin, the opening of this second Toulouse line marks the achievement of Airbus’ strategic plan to have 10 final assembly lines covering the entire A320 Family and operational globally in 2026. This worldwide industrial network is split across four global sites, including four lines in Hamburg (Germany), two in Mobile (U.S.), two in Tianjin (China) and two in Toulouse (France).

Located alongside the initial line inaugurated in July 2023 within the former A380 Jean-Luc Lagardère building, this facility maximizes the existing footprint while integrating digital controls, automated logistics and robotics to optimize workflows and workstation ergonomics. 

While the first line already employs around 700 workers, this second line will progressively ramp up to full capacity, eventually bringing the total workforce across both final assembly lines at the Jean-Luc Lagardère site to nearly 1,500 people.

Source | Airbus Helicopters

Airbus Helicopters (Berlin, Germany) is introducing an uncrewed version of its H145 helicopter, the U145. A maiden flight with a safety pilot onboard is planned for the end of 2026, with entry into service at the beginning of the next decade. 

“With the U145, we are offering our customers an autonomous, uncrewed version of our H145 helicopter — combining the proven airframe, power and useful load of the H145 with the autonomy of a UAS,” says Matthieu Louvot, CEO of Airbus Helicopters. “To develop the U145 and its capabilities as a multi-mission UAS, we will be teaming up with leading autonomous mission partners to further expand the UAS ecosystem in Europe.”

The H145 is the second crewed helicopter Airbus is converting into an uncrewed version, following the VSR700, which is derived from the Cabri G2. The U145 will feature a specialized sensor suite andAI for full autonomy. Compared with a crewed H145 helicopter, the U145 will have no physical cockpit, and will include significant adaptations for cargo, such as an integrated nose door including a foldable loading table and a dedicated cargo floor. 

With a maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) of 3,800 kilograms, the U145 is being developed as a mission-agnostic solution for civil and military applications, primarily high-volume cargo supply. Its modular design supports expansion into roles like disaster management, firefighting, armed scouting, surveillance and drone mothership functionality for air launched effects, where Airbus is partnering with MBDA, as well as crewed-uncrewed teaming. 

In the U.S., Airbus U.S. Space & Defense is, together with its partners Shield AI, L3 Harris and Parry Lab, offering the U.S. Marine Corps a dedicated U.S. development, the MQ-72C, which is a fully autonomous variant of the Lakota UH-72B, tailored to their specific needs. 

In total, there are more than 1,800 H145 family helicopters in service for military, parapublic and civil missions, logging a total of more than 8.5 million flight hours. 

Source | Airbus (top left, clockwise) 2026 annual press conference question about NGSA, ramping A320 production, world’s largest thermoplastic composite (TPC) press installed at Airbus Bremen and testing the open fan’s promise.

Boeing (Arlington, Va., U.S.) CEO Kelly Ortberg told Aviation Week & Space Technology that the market for a next-generation narrowbody is less ready than it was a year ago and that the timeframe for when such an airplane will be available is moving to the right. “Perfect,” responded Airbus (Toulouse, France) CEO Guillaume Faury, in a separate interview when Ortberg’s statement was quoted to him.

Ortberg said airline customers are focused on improving the on-wing performance of existing engines rather than on new platforms and that he sees no reason to launch until the market is ready. He did say Boeing is more focused on a next-generation single-aisle family than a return to the pre-COVID-19 new midmarket airplane (NMA) concept, but described the decision as a 50-year commitment, not one to be driven by competitive pressure.

Access the original articles on this subject, “Why Boeing’s CEO Sees The Next Narrowbody 'Moving To The Right” and “Why Airbus CEO Is Bullish On Launching A320 Replacement In 2030.”

When asked if Airbus has started preparing for the launch of NGSA, Faury responded, “Yes. We say what we do; we do what we say.” He confirmed the program is on track for a 2030 launch with entry into service in the second half of the 2030s. The preparation program, called eAction, includes “a lot of research and technology development, comparison of technology solutions, pre-projects and simulations,” says Faury. “There is work with partners to review the different options for wings, fuselage, propulsion system and industrial systems. We are moving forward.”

Faury sees timing and preparation as a strategic advantage — if Airbus launches, the supply chain will orient toward it. “We have a very strong product that will need a very strong successor,” he told Aviation Week. “We don’t want others to do what we are best placed to do — being strong, being able to invest, having the capacity to put engineering and financial resources into it, attracting appetite from suppliers.” He added that if Boeing moves much later, that is their problem.

When asked about the size of eAction, Faury explained: “We are not at scale with prototypes or industrial activities. That is what is starting when we come close to the launch of the program and mostly after the launch. But we have a ramp-up of resources.” He also noted no decision has yet been made as to how steep the ramp-up of NGSA will be. “We want to ramp up quickly, but that does not mean we will ramp up as quickly as the production system would enable us. The production system will most likely be very different from the one we have today.”

Composite aerostructures suppliers are already advancing manufacturing technologies in anticipation, targeting production rates of 100 aircraft per month or higher and expecting significantly greater composite content than current-generation narrowbodies carry. For more on what suppliers including Aernnova, Daher, Latecoere, Montana Aerospace and Saab are developing — and the financial pressures the aerostructures sector faces heading into this investment cycle — see CW’s recent news report based on another Aviation Week article: “Composite aerostructures suppliers pitch thermoplastics, automation for next narrowbody.”

Layup of an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) pod. Source (All Images) | Apex Space & Defense Systems

Apex Space & Defense Systems (Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) a manufacturer of lightweight composite solutions for the space, defense and mission-critical infrastructure sectors, has acquired Oak Engineering and Manufacturing (Oak), a Gainesville, Florida-based composite manufacturer serving the uncrewed systems market, including uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV) and uncrewed surface vehicles (USV).

Oak produces composite parts and precision CNC-machined components for uncrewed platforms, working with carbon fiber, Kevlar and fiberglass through wet layup, infusion, prepreg and forming processes. Its team supports defense primes and uncrewed platform developers from design to first article and into full-rate production. Oak holds AS9100D and ISO 9001 certifications, reinforcing its ability to meet stringent quality requirements across leading space and defense programs.

Composite-overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV).

The acquisition of Oak expands Apex’s geographic reach and strengthens Apex’s domestic production capacity for composite structures used in UAVs, USVs, plus ground and maritime systems, where defense and aerospace customers increasingly require scalable, U.S.-based manufacturing partners with sufficient capacity and geographic reach to support all major manufacturing hubs.

“Oak brings deep expertise in composite and CNC manufacturing for uncrewed platforms, along with an engineering and quality team that directly strengthens the Apex New Product Development [NPD] team and increases the capability of what Apex can deliver to our customers,” says Tracy Glende, CEO of Apex. 

The Gainesville facility will continue operating with its leadership team and workforce remaining in place as part of the Apex platform.

Apex’s business units now include Advanced Composite Products & Technology (ACPT), All American Racers (AAR), Unitech Composites (UCI) and Oak Engineering and Manufacturing (Oak), forming a four-unit composites manufacturing platform backed by Charger Investment Partners. Across its business units, Apex brings more than 60 years of experience, more than 400 skilled team members and 400,000 square feet of manufacturing facilities.

Source | Department of Defense Manufacturing Technology Program

The Air Force ManTech program, part of OSW ManTech’s Joint Defense Manufacturing Technology Panel (JDMTP), has developed an AI-powered, in situ inspection system for validating the quality of complex 3D multilayer composite preforms. The effort featured an additional milestone: expedited development of A&P Technology’s (Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.) in-line inspection of overbraided preforms for hypersonic and defense composite components. 

AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) devoted to developing emerging technologies for defense, identified A&P’s overbraiding technology as a key technology for meeting the demands of high-rate, high-quality composite production.

Key benefits of this in-line inspection system include:

• Increased production rates and reduced costs by automating defect detection and enabling immediate response to non-conformance.
• Enhanced reliability and accuracy — outperforming manual inspection in precision and defect identification.

The inspection system supports U.S. Air Force and advanced air mobility (AAM) initiatives, including next-gen defense platforms like hypersonic vehicles. 

Learn more about the program on LinkedIn. Visit A&P Technology’s page on CW for more examples of its braided reinforcement products and various application features.

Source | Getty Images

Since Counterpoint Market Intelligence (Cambridgeshire, U.K.) began tracking the aerostructures industry in 2004, one theme has remained remarkably consistent: Aerostructures has often struggled to deliver the level of profitability seen in other parts of the aerospace market. Companies have been bought, sold, merged, carved out or broken apart in the hope of creating more resilient businesses. Yet sustainable returns have frequently proved elusive.

The fate of the aerostructures sector has major implications for the composites industry. Aerostructures, which form the wings, fuselage, empennage and nacelle, is one of the largest end markets for composites by value.

However, the companies that manufacture many of these structures face a difficult set of economic realities. Despite advances in materials, automation and processes, much of the aerostructures supply base remains under pressure.

A challenging business model

Many of this sector’s challenges are inherent to the aerostructures business model. Unlike engines or aircraft systems, aerostructures generally has a limited aftermarket. Once a structural assembly is delivered, there are fewer recurring, high-margin opportunities than exist for engines or aircraft systems. Airlines tend to repair versus replace where possible. Demand is therefore highly dependent on aircraft production rates.

The asset base tends to be more specialized. A production line for a major aircraft structure is often designed, qualified and tooled around a specific aircraft program. Moving work from one site to another is feasible, but in practice it is expensive, slow and heavily constrained by qualification requirements. These limitations make rationalizing capacity or achieving synergies between different facilities difficult.

Aerostructures also tends to be less intellectual property (IP)-intensive than some other aerospace segments. A significant share of the IP sits with the aircraft OEM or the raw material supplier rather than with the company manufacturing the part. That does not mean aerostructures suppliers lack expertise. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Manufacturing large, high-quality, certified structures is a significant challenge, and companies typically invest heavily to meet OEM demands and achieve proficiency. Yet the lack of IP means many structures suppliers struggle to capture the same value as businesses with more proprietary content, deeper aftermarket streams or higher switching costs.

A track record of low margins

Broader industry trends have amplified these structural pressures. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, successive cost-reduction initiatives from major OEMs had already pushed margins down across the supply chain and increased working capital demands. The pandemic then created a sharp drop in aircraft production rates, hitting aerostructures suppliers especially hard because of their dependence on new-build aircraft. Many companies reduced their workforce, leading to a loss of key skills. When production rates began to recover, suppliers had to rebuild capacity in a world of labor shortages, inflation, material constraints and fragile balance sheets.

Figure 1. Median operating profit margins of selected aerostructures players. Source (All Images) | Counterpoint Marketing Intelligence

The chart above (Fig. 1) shows profit margins from selected aerostructures players. The sample includes companies with accessible financial statements that are either pure-play (or mostly pure-play) aerostructures businesses, as well as companies that report an aerostructures segment separately. The metric shown is generally operating profit, although there are some differences in exact reporting definitions between companies. Due to data availability, the sample skews somewhat toward Europe, although it also includes North American and Asian players.

Before the pandemic, median operating profit margins in the sample generally hovered around the high single digits to low double digits. There is wide variation in profit margins across the aerospace industry depending on the market served, but that number is generally lower than the 15-20% average that we see across the industry. After the pandemic, margins fell sharply — in most cases into negative territory. There has been some recovery as production rates have improved, but several players remain under pressure.

Disappearing Super Tier 1s

This weak profitability has contributed to a reshaping of the industry. When Counterpoint first began reporting on aerostructures, the market contained a set of large independent players that were sometimes described as “Super Tier 1s” — suppliers with the scale, engineering and investment capability to take on major aircraft structures. In 2004, we counted six major players: Alenia, Goodrich, Hurel Hispano, Kawasaki, Mitsubishi and Vought. The transaction that created Spirit AeroSystems would not be completed until the following year, but that would create a seventh. This period coincided with Boeing’s 787 and Airbus’ A350 production, two programs that relied on significant outsourcing to Super Tier 1s, with the OEMs acting as integrators.

Over the past two decades, that Super Tier 1 landscape has changed substantially. Some companies have exited. Others have been absorbed into larger groups. Several have attempted to rationalize portfolios, only to find that the cost and complexity of transferring programs made restructuring more difficult than expected. Today’s landscape has so few remaining Super Tier 1 players that it may now be time to retire the term altogether.

Trends toward insourcing

OEM strategies have also changed, with the pendulum swinging away from the high levels of outsourcing seen two decades ago to bringing key structures capabilities back under direct control (Fig. 2). For Airbus, part of this strategy has been the formation of Airbus Atlantic (combining Stelia with the Montoir-de-Bretagne and Nantes facilities) and the rolling of Premium Aerotec into Airbus Aerostructures GmbH. Both produce large sections and components for fuselages and wings along with other key airframe capabilities across multiple platforms. As the company commented in its 2023 business update call, “Long story short, we decided 4 years ago that aerostructures are core, that aerostructures will bear a lot of innovation, that it’s all about the physical infrastructure but also the digital infrastructure. And to deploy a digital infrastructure that is common for the whole plane, we wanted to own aerostructures ... [so] we have decided to go for a model where we are in ‘make’ [as opposed to purely ‘buy’], but we are still organized in a way that we have dedicated companies and organizations to take care of it … This has been designed to prepare for the next generation of planes, as the aerostructure will embed much more integrated functions.”

For Boeing, the largest shift has been the acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems. Boeing completed the acquisition in December 2025, bringing significant production capability back in-house. Airbus simultaneously took ownership of several former Spirit sites and work packages supporting Airbus programs, including activities in Kinston, Saint-Nazaire, Casablanca, Belfast and Prestwick. For Boeing, however, this in-sourcing follows a wider trend. The wing for the 777X aircraft, for example, is manufactured by Boeing in Everett, Washington, in contrast to its outsourcing in the original 777 program to a consortium of Japanese aerostructures suppliers.

If we compare the level of outsourcing from over two decades ago to today, we see a steady rise in the value of aerostructures being outsourced. Following the Spirit AeroSystems transaction and taking into account Airbus’ own companies, the pendulum of outsourcing is shifting back toward in-house production. And it is likely that the level of insourcing will only increase in the near term.

Figure 2. Aerostructures insourcing vs. outsourcing by value.

Forecasted strategies and adaptations

Where does the industry go from here? We at Counterpoint see three considerations.

First, it is worth noting that we expect financials to continue to improve as production rates increase. Single-aisle aircraft have seen a good recovery post-pandemic, and twin-aisle aircraft, which were lagging behind, have now also rebounded with further increase expected in the coming years. For an industry that is highly rate-dependent, that will offer some relief.

Second, we expect aerostructures providers to adopt a range of strategies that will help improve their position. Our analysis at Counterpoint suggests there is no dominant, one-size-fits-all strategy, but instead depends highly on the legacy program sets, geography and capabilities of the company. Some players, such as Montana Aerospace, have had success with vertical integration, controlling the supply chain from extrusions to finished assemblies. Others have specialized around different production technologies or aircraft components. ST Engineering MRAS, for example, has had success with composite materials and nacelles. Others have tried to shift the most labor-intensive work to lower-cost regions and/or increase automation over time and where it makes sense [see CW’s tour of FACC AG, Jakovlje, Croatia].

And although we expect more work to move in-house, we believe appetite still remains for OEMs to continue outsourcing large pieces of work. Aerostructures suppliers still provide a valuable source of expertise, capability and investment. For new programs like next-gen single-aisle (NGSA) aircraft, where that investment will be widespread and significant, this will be critical. Saab, for example, is actively looking at composite technologies to position themselves for next-generation opportunities.

Finally, we expect mergers and acquisitions to continue to play a role in the industry as suppliers adapt and reshape their portfolios to remain competitive. Particularly as the industry awaits these new clean sheet single-aisle programs from Airbus and Boeing.

What does this all mean for composites?

The composites industry should watch these changes closely, as they present both risks and opportunities. Future aircraft are likely to need more advanced composite structures, not fewer. While much of the industry is focused on how and where composites will be used, we believe it is also important to understand who will industrialize them, who will invest in the required capacity and who will earn an acceptable return for doing so.

For those further upstream in the value chain, these changes can impact product and process development and how buying decisions are made within the industry. They also can affect how companies choose technology partners and what role those partners might have on future programs.

Aerostructures has always been a demanding business. It sits at the intersection of advanced engineering, capital-intensive manufacturing and complex production schedules. The next generation of aircraft will create a major opportunity for composites, but that opportunity exists in a supply chain that is poised to look rather different from the one we see today. Counterpoint continues to watch this sector with great interest, and we remain hopeful that the industry charts a path to a more sustainable financial footing going forward.

About the Author

Collin Heller

Collin is vice president of Counterpoint Market Intelligence (Cambridgeshire, U.K.) where he provides market intelligence on aerospace supply chains. He works with aerospace OEMs, suppliers and investors on market analysis and strategy. Prior to Counterpoint, Heller worked as a strategy consultant in the aviation, aerospace and raw materials industries, including the support of several M&A transactions within the composites industry. contact@counterpoint.aero

Source | Bell Textron Inc.

Bell Textron Inc. (Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.) has successfully completed the assembly of two composite wing structures for the MV-75 Cheyenne (previously the V-280 Valor). Bell will integrate these wings into the first two MV-75 test aircraft, advancing the program’s build process.

The tiltrotor wing is a key piece of structure for the MV-75. It provides the structural backbone of the aircraft with robust strength, optimized stiffness and enhanced survivability. The wings are a core competency for Bell; all key components are made within its Advanced Composite Center and other facilities, including the composite wing skins and spars, the tailored aluminum substructure and assembly.

“After decades of building V-22 wings, we’ve learned new ways to do things better, faster and smarter by implementing these lessons into the design upfront,” says Culley Shafer, director of operations, Amarillo, Bell. “The team is constantly evolving, making adjustments, refining sequencing and implementing engineering changes to keep raising the bar on quality, safety and efficiency.”

The first wing, completed in February 2026, was fabricated with 90% fewer labor hours compared to the initial V-22 wing build. Building on this success, the second wing was produced with an additional 40% reduction, highlighting the team’s focus on affordability and production readiness.

With the completion of the wing structures, the team is currently integrating its system provisions. The next step of the build assembly involves mating the wing structures with the fuselage, currently being assembled at the Wichita Assembly Center, and the nacelle, which is also progressing through assembly. All work is accelerating the program toward its test phase and production.

Source | Syensqo

Per an expansion of the companies’ strategic sales partnership, distribution and service company Biesterfeld (Hamburg, Germany) holds new distribution rights for Syensqo’s (Brussels, Belgium) performance products range in the U.K. and Ireland. Biesterfeld now serves as preferred distributor across all of Europe, except for Italy. 

The product range, represented by Biesterfeld’s international team of composite experts, includes primer, adhesive films, foaming adhesives, paste adhesive, thermoset composites prepreg, thermoplastic composites, resins, surfacing films, core splice foam, potting compound, silicone, epoxy, phenolic, cyanate ester, BMI and polyimide. All products suited for the aerospace industry are compliant with OEM specifications. Products are supplied through Biesterfeld’s EN9120-certified European supply chain, with U.K. warehousing and local certification in active development.

Biesterfeld and Syensqo have been working together in the composites and tooling segment since 2021. Syensqo develops aerospace composites for some of the most complex and unique challenges in the aerospace industry, offering the broadest portfolio in the aerospace market, from composites for aerospace, adhesives, aircraft film and specialty polymers for fixed-wing aircraft, rotorcraft, aircraft propulsion and systems, space and launch, and advanced air mobility applications. As a distributor, Biesterfeld serves a wide range of industries, including aerospace, defense and the automotive industry. Biesterfeld says it is able to support customers throughout the value chain thanks to its broad international sales network, in-depth technical expertise and customized logistics solutions.

“We are very pleased to further expand our composites portfolio together with Syensqo,” says Andrew Parsons, head of sales at Biesterfeld Petroplas. “Syensqo’s advanced composites are among the most trusted materials in aerospace and high-performance manufacturing and bringing them to U.K. and Ireland customers through Biesterfeld is a real step forward for the market. Our local team offers deep technical expertise and reliable European supply, so customers get faster access and genuine support. With our U.K. presence now expanding, we're ready to support customers from day one and to grow this partnership for the long term.”

“Over the past four years we have built a strong and close strategic partnership with Syensqo, based on trust and shared ambition. We are very excited to now bring that expertise to key industries in the U.K. and Ireland — including aerospace, space, defense, MRO and automotive,” adds Dr. Johannes Martin, market manager for Performance Products at Biesterfeld.

Source | Cambium

Cambium (El Segundo, Calif., U.S.) presents ApexShield 3000, a high-temperature phthalonitrile coating engineered for metallic and composite substrates operating in extreme thermal environments. The coating supports applications from hypersonic flight to electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency (RF) shielding for electronics and commercial programs requiring wavelength-tunable performance.

ApexShield 3000 is a sprayable, solvent-based, one-part liquid that cures at temperatures as low as 215°C and delivers sustained operational performance up to 315°C, with short-duration capability up to 427°C. The system requires no refrigerated storage and is available in quarts, gallons and drums, supporting both prototype development and production-scale programs.

The coating accepts conductive and nonconductive fillers, enabling engineers to customize performance characteristics for specific program requirements. Technical data sheets are available at cambiumglobal.com.

According to Cambium, its differentiation is not any single class of advanced materials but a distinctive development approach — offering customers every aspect of molecular discovery, product development, certification and qualification, and rapid scalable manufacturing across the U.S. and Europe, all under one roof.

“ApexShield 3000 gives engineers a practical, high-performance solution for protecting structures that operate in environments where standard coatings fail,” says Cambium CTO, James Griffin. “The combination of sprayable application, room temperature storage and validated high-temperature performance makes this a deployable tool for defense and aerospace manufacturers working under real production constraints."

ApexShield 3000 builds on Cambium’s growing portfolio of phthalonitrile-based materials, including the ApexShield 1000 resin system, which reduced carbon-carbon (C/C) parts fabrication cycles by 70-80% for hypersonic applications.

The Carbon Eater. Source (All Images) | Carbon Cleanup

Carbon Cleanup GmbH (Traun, Austria) has been officially awarded the Aircraft Material Recycling Award at the ASA AFRA Annual Conference in Las Vegas. The distinction recognizes the company’s Carbon Eater technology as the year’s most significant operational advancement in aviation material recycling. Presented by the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association (AFRA, Washington, D.C., U.S.), the award validates Carbon Cleanup’s success in resolving a critical bottleneck for the aerospace sector.

The Carbon Eater microfactory fundamentally disrupts legacy aircraft recycling infrastructure by replacing outdated disposal methods with an autonomous, clean alternative. The microfactory turns composite scrap into high-performance carbon fiber feedstock, ready to be reused in existing manufacturing techniques, such as injection molding, large-format additive manufacturing (LFAM) or bulk molding compound (BMC). 

Carbon Cleanup identifies the following core pillars of its technology:

Low carbon footprint. The Carbon Eater microfactory operates with a near-zero environmental footprint. Unlike traditional recycling methods, it processes material entirely without the use of water, heat or external chemicals.

Carbon Cleanup receives AFRA Award in Las Vegas.

Decentralized processing. Deployed directly at the dismantling or manufacturing facility, the mobile system bypasses the heavy logistical costs and high emissions associated with transporting bulky composite scrap across long distances.

Dust-free occupational safety. The fully enclosed, closed-loop architecture contains all particulates at the source, completely removing the respiratory and workplace safety risks traditionally associated with composite material recovery.

Proven business case for circular material flow. Validated across multiple industries, the Carbon Eater establishes the economically viable recovery of carbon fibers and their seamless reintegration into high-performance products.

Carbon Cleanup is currently scaling deployment of its system with primary aerospace, automotive and wind energy manufacturing partners globally. Learn more about the company at CW’s Sustainability page.

Source | Video by Waldorado-TV

Coexpair (Namur, Belgium) and its automated fiber placement (AFP) branch, Coexpair Dynamics (Namur), have been featured on Walloon entrepreneurial TV program Waldorado (see video below). The broadcast highlights the company’s high-tech manufacturing technologies that enable mass production of high-quality composite components for aerospace customers, and touches on Coexpair’s expansion from civil applications to defense, a market that is witnessing significant economic growth.

The episode showcases how Coexpair and Coexpair Dynamics are advancing composites developments for these markets, including:

• SQRTM 4.0 technology. The latest iteration of Coexpair’s composites manufacturing process features full automation, synchronizing hardware and software to dramatically improve efficiency. 
• Maestro Software Suite. An AI-enhanced, purpose-built data software, Maestro is designed to optimize composite production, from AFP machines to RTM/SQRTM injectors, including the workstations (pneumatic press).

Coexpair’s technology is backed by the Walloon Ministry of Economy and the Belgian Minister of Defence. It has been explored by major aerospace entities like Lockheed Martin for F-35 parts (read “Coexpair to fabricate, demonstrate and test Lockheed F-35 composite parts using SQRTM 4.0”), as well as Airbus and Safran (“Coexpair … delivers advanced hot press for Safran new composites development lab”).

As part of Coexpair’s growth into defense, the video also discusses the Wallonia defense sector, a rapidly growing industrial ecosystem in the Walloon region of Belgium dedicated to civil, aerospace, space and defense. It includes several large companies (Belgian and international) — including Coexpair — with full value chain control, as well as a dynamic network of SMEs continuously developing new skills.

Wallonia has organized itself within the GIWAS (Groupement des Industries Wallonnes Aéronautiques et Spatiales) group, a federation that is backed by regional initiatives to advance Industry 4.0 digitization, robotics and sustainable aviation technology.

“Entering the defense market presents significant complexities,” explains Agnès Flémal, chief operating officer of GIWAS. “Gaining entry requires some time, as approval is necessary. You must possess specific qualifications and certifications. We [GIWAS] will comprehend how Walloon enterprises adapt to obtain contracts in the defense sector.”

Learn more on LinkedIn. 

Source: Colibrium

Colibrium Additive, a GE Aerospace company, has been awarded a contract by NAVAIR in support of its Additive Manufacturing Capability initiative, which aims to enable expedited testing, qualification and certification of metal additively manufactured parts and improve the U.S. Navy’s operational readiness.

Under that agreement, Colibrium Additive will deliver six metal alloy Material Process Combinations (MPCs) which are the detailed metal alloy’s physical and mechanical property data; optimize process parameters; consolidate material and process specifications; and establish design allowables for the properties tested.

This includes expanding the existing AlSi7Mg and IN718 packages, and adding 17-4PH and 7050-RAM2 to the current portfolio of 316L, CoCr and Ti64. A dedicated thin-wall fatigue characterization will help validate the performance and fatigue life of thin-wall geometries, supporting the qualification and certification of additively manufactured structures for aviation use.

Under the agreement, and to meet NAVAIR required development timelines, Colibrium Additive will also deliver three M Line metal 3D printing systems and one M2 Series 5 printer required to support the MPC development effort, and a comprehensive Addworks services package is also included. This package includes licensed material characterization/data curves, manufacturing process instructions and select specifications to support the additive manufacture of NAVAIR components, as well as a training program to enable repeatable production of airworthy parts.

Together, these elements are intended to shorten lead times for critical components, improve fleet sustainment and enhance overall naval aviation readiness.

The program also includes a comprehensive training plan for teams in manufacturing, quality, design and materials, as well as for machine operators, to build enduring in-house capability.

“Colibrium Additive is proud to extend its support of NAVAIR with proven metal additive technology and deep application expertise,” says Lars Bruns, executive technology leader at Colibrium Additive. “By combining certified hardware with licensed process data and hands-on training, we are helping accelerate the Navy’s ability to produce repeatable, airworthy components at scale and reduce supply chain risk for critical aviation parts.”

Aviation Week discusses (top left, clockwise) Airbus' next-generation single aisle program and the technologies being developed by composites aerostructures suppliers like Latecoere and Aernnova as well as thermoplastic composites (TPC) welding (demonstrated in the MFFD) and fast-cure resins. Sources | Airbus, Latecoere, Aernnova, DLR CC by license

In a June 17 article by Thierry Dubois, Aviation Week discusses all of the key topics related to next-generation single-aisle (NGSA) programs that CW and composites industry members know so well:

• Production demands and issues as build rates ramp.
• Composites, metals and hybrid approaches.
• Flexible automation and AI assisted technologies.
• Thermoplastic composites (TPC) and fast-cure thermosets.

While launch timing for next-generation narrowbody aircraft is still unconfirmed, Dubois reports that composite aerostructures suppliers are advancing manufacturing technologies aimed at production rates of 100 aircraft/month and perhaps higher. Airbus’ (Toulouse, France) NGSA and a future Boeing (Arlington, Va., U.S.) 737 Max successor are expected to carry significantly higher composite content than current platforms to achieve the targeted improvements in efficiency and continue forward the maintenance benefits already validated on the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787.

Composites currently account for approximately 15% of the weight of an Airbus A320, compared with 53% on the A350, notes Dubois. On next-generation aircraft, new composite structures could reduce aerostructure weight 10% compared with the previous generation of composites, or 20–30% compared with metal equivalents. Lilian Brayle, president of aerospace for Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa and industrial at Hexcel (Stamford, Conn., U.S.), told Aviation Week that Airbus could target composites comprising more than 60% of the NGSA airframe.

Daher thermoplastic composite wing rib survives ultimate load without failure in structural testing. Source | Daher

A composite wing is the baseline option for the NGSA, says Dominique Bailly, research and development director at Daher (Nantes, France). Daher supplies components for Airbus’ Wing of Tomorrow demonstrator program at Broughton, England, alongside Montana Aerospace (Reinach, Switzerland). The latter has delivered two full-scale prototypes of a hybrid metal-composite slat box assembly for that demonstrator, and is progressing a hybrid rear secondary pylon structure for Airbus’ Propulsion of Tomorrow program.

Automated tape layup (ATL, left) and hot drape forming systems (right) for Aernnova’s industialized production of composite aerostructures. Source | Aernnova

The central driver for NGSA is manufacturability at high rate. Aernnova (Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain) is prioritizing flexible automation to address the limitations of current labor-intensive processes, says Miguel Angel Castillo, vice president of technology development at Aernnova. Meanwhile, Saab (Linköping, Sweden) — which supplies composite ailerons and overwing doors for the A320 family — is evaluating AI-assisted quality monitoring and production traceability as a means of supporting higher output, according to Magnus Falk, vice president and head of business development at Saab Aerospace Systems.

TPC are drawing attention for their manufacturability advantages. Daher produces thermoplastic pylon fairings for the A320 and is participating 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. Stéphane Bouzat, senior vice president of innovation and technology at Latecoere (Toulouse, France), notes that thermoplastics’ shorter production cycles — including welded assembly requiring roughly 15 minutes per join versus multi-hour thermoset cure cycles — can offset a resin cost premium of approximately 40%.

Thermosets are also advancing. Hexcel is developing fast-cure thermoset processes targeting cycle times of 40 minutes, along with out-of-autoclave curing options like hot pressing (see process steps and read more about snap-cure systems).

Median operating profit margins of selected aerostructures players. Source | Counterpoint Marketing Intelligence

Industry analyst Kevin Michaels, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory (Ann Arbor, Mich., U.S.), cautioned that aerostructures suppliers face financial pressure under current contract terms. “Airframers must understand that their suppliers need to be profitable,” Michaels told Aviation Week. He also noted automation may achieve a 5-10% cost reduction that aerostructures specialists with single-digit margins may find valuable. “Moreover, the absence of an aftermarket means productivity and utilization in the factory are crucial.”

“A chance to introduce new technologies at a broad scale happens once every 40 years,” says Brayle at Hexcel, adding that composite technology has matured since the A350 was designed in the 2000s: “We’ve made advances in safety, ease of manufacturing and certifiability. Airframers have yet to use composites to maximum advantage.” 

Read more:

• Full Aviation Week article: “Composite Structures Suppliers Pitch Techniques For Future Narrowbody”
• Read “A sector under pressure: Aerostructures, insourcing and the future of composites”
• More about NGSA on CW
• Are you attending June 2026 Tech Days: Thermoplastic Composites for Aerospace Structures?

Fabrum has developed lightweight composite liquid hydrogen (LH₂) tanks for zero-emissions aviation and demonstrated fast filling with <5 watts of heat leak. Source | Fabrum

The development of composite tanks to store liquid hydrogen (LH₂) continues, with multiple projects presented at JEC World 2026 but no less than 22 projects listed in a recent CW report on carbon fiber and composites in H₂ storage, including LeiWaCo, COCOLIH2T, H2ELIOS, OVERLEAF, PHOEBUS, fLHYing Tank, Lufo UpLift and many more.

In late 2025, Fabrum (Christchurch, New Zealand) successfully demonstrated rapid refilling of its composite tanks to store liquid hydrogen (LH₂) with <5 watts of heat leak, meeting industry requirements. The refueling was successfully completed at Fabrum’s dedicated LH₂ test facility at Christchurch Airport. This blog is based on my interview with Hugh Reynolds, co-founder and technical director at Fabrum, to better understand the company’s developments in composite LH₂ tanks and its outlook for carbon fiber and composites in these tanks.

From composites to superconductivity to LH₂ systems

Fabrum describes itself as a development and manufacturing company. “That gives us a wide range of applications that cross pollinate and allows us to learn, transpose and test new technologies,” says Reynolds.

Trained as a mechanical engineer, he spent years in metal and composites manufacturing before co-founding Fabrum to work on superconductivity applications. “The very cold liquids and materials these systems use require non-conducting containment, typically a vacuum flask like what is used in a thermos, except it must be nonmagnetic, sealed and withstand the pressures involved,” he explains.

The company spent 15 years working with composite equipment for superconductivity, including building one of the world’s first superconducting transformers in collaboration with the University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand). “We learned a lot about how porous composites can be if they’re not made properly, and even if they are made reasonably well,” notes Reynolds. “A lot of the techniques we’ve developed came out of that work.”

“And then, just prior to COVID, when people were starting to look at H₂ for alternative fuel and energy systems,” he continues, “we realized that our technology could also be used to make lightweight LH₂ tanks for aircraft. We also developed the cryogenic cooling systems for liquifying H₂.” Fabrum approached several companies with proposals that included supplying the whole fuel system, including a small H₂ liquefaction system, distribution system, onboard composite storage tank and LH₂ delivery to the fuel cell. “And in the process of working through that,” says Reynolds, “we realized that there was a lot of discussion about how you could do this but at that time, 6-7 years ago, almost nobody was actually doing it yet.”

Fabrum was then approached by an Australian mining company. “They wanted to decarbonize and had a very ambitious project to run megawatt-scale fuel cells on LH₂,” he explains. “That gave us a wonderful opportunity to make all of this work in a real-world industrial application.” The resulting storage system was a more traditional metal dewar construction and very large — 10,000 liters. “Part of the reason it was metal was to resist damage during service,” says Reynolds. “The tray is loaded with 250 tons of rock, and the possibility of damage to the outer skin of the tank is significant because it sits between the truck’s wheels under the tray. So, we made the outer skin from 10-millimeter-thick medium tensile steel.”

Challenge of first composite tanks for LH₂, triple skin for fast fill

Fabrum’s history is essential to understand where the company is today, he notes. “If you don't have a need for this technology, then you don't spend time developing it. The true commercial desire for H₂-powered aircraft is only about 5 years old. So, if you started down the path to develop a composite LH₂ tank 5 years ago, you've only got 5 years of experience. But we've been doing it for 20 years because we wanted exactly the same technology for our superconductors.”

It isn’t surprising, then, that Fabrum was the first to demonstrate a fully functioning composite LH₂ tank. “There were some traditional metal LH₂ tanks for mobility and perhaps some small-scale tests that showed a composite tank could hold LH₂, but we’re the only company or organization that I know of that's actually demonstrated a full composite tank with fuel delivery system that can actually operate on a continuous basis.”

Fabrum had to overcome major challenges, including thermal shock, H₂ leak tightness and vacuum leak tightness, explains Reynolds, “where you don't want the vacuum [in the space between the tanks] to decay. And then you have to be able to build such a system and make it affordable.”

“The one thing we didn't have already was the ability to do a fast fill,” he continues. After identifying the issues involved, Fabrum proceeded with a solution that resulted in its patented triple skin design. “We have a liquid containment vessel inside the pressure vessel made from a particular construction to handle the thermal shock during fast filling,” explains Reynolds. “But that containment vessel doesn't have to handle the pressure loads, and therefore you've decoupled liquid containment and thermal shock from pressure capability. That was key and also provides redundancy should any incident cause loss of  vacuum in the outer shell. You use vacuum there because it's the lightest weight, most effective insulation mechanism. But if that gets compromised, then you get a very high heat load onto your inner vessel, and the LH₂ is going to boil very rapidly.”

“The triple skin decouples that again and only 25% or less of the heat load gets into the LH₂, which means the rate we would have to vent in an emergency to prevent pressure buildup is substantially reduced. Our testing with LH₂ in real operating conditions shows that if you lost vacuum in flight, there's actually no issue with continuing to fly. That was a key milestone as we move toward certification of our systems for several drone and small aircraft.”

A custom-built Fabrum double-skin LH₂ composite tank (left) for AeroDelft in the Netherlands, sits alongside Fabrum’s existing double-skin (center) and triple-skin (right) LH₂ composite tanks. Source | Fabrum LinkedIn post

Composite LH₂ tanks without carbon fiber?

Fabrum has used carbon fiber, “but through our years of work with superconductive systems, we learned you've got to be very careful about system longevity,” he notes. “Carbon fiber’s high stiffness can cause matrix cracking during the cool down process for these cryogenic systems. So, we specifically design our laminates with other materials to avoid that problem.”

Fabrum’s tanks are fully composite with composite internal support structures, says Reynolds, “but use metal fittings and a special joining system that lets us connect them reliably to the composite. We’ve also developed some special manufacturing techniques, because if you can't build it economically, then it's not worth anything. These techniques provide very high vacuum tightness where we don't get leaks through the laminate. For example, carbon fiber is notorious for having voids down the fiber bundles. Because those bundles are so fine, getting resin into all of the thousands of tows is very challenging.” Instead, Fabrum uses glass fiber with epoxy resin in a particular way that has been proven to work over decades of development and refinement.

LH₂ tanks for aircraft must be composite and affordable

The fast fill operation demonstrated in late 2025 used a 180-liter tank sized to store 8-10 kilograms of LH₂. Fabrum has now designed two slightly larger wingtip tanks, each storing 10-20 kilograms, for a general aviation plane that seats up to six passengers. “This size of tank is what we're currently fitting to helicopters, vertical lift aircraft and autonomous aircraft,” says Reynolds. “We did a short study on the aircraft and found that if we use twin 20-liter tanks, by the time you account for reserve fuel allowance, we can get 1-1.5 hours of flight time.”

Compared to the systems it has developed for mining vehicles and ground applications, the tanks for aircraft are small. “But we’re using the same technology and learnings across these applications and already have the plans in place to convert the inner vessels of the mining system to composites, which will probably save about 1.5 tons of mass per storage vessel.”

For aircraft, notes Reynolds, composites are the only option precisely because of this weight savings. “We’ve already seen some European aerospace groups abandon their aluminum tank developments because the weight penalty is too high, and there is also a thermal penalty, while composites can be good insulators, depending on the materials and construction used.”

But are these composite LH₂ tanks really affordable? “They have to be,” says Reynolds. “We come from an industrial background and understand what our customers’ cost targets. We’re not trying to reinvent anything or use aerospace costing, and not using carbon fiber helps with that.”

Boil-off and dwell time

Key issues for all LH₂ tanks used for mobility are how to manage temperature and pressure during operation but also when vehicles sit idle. How do Fabrum’s composite LH₂ tanks compare in terms of boil-off and dwell time? “When they're being used and you're drawing the LH₂ fuel off, you don't have any issues because that boil-off energy is going out into the fuel cell or gas turbine and you can maintain pressure,” says Reynolds. “We tend to operate at design pressures of less than 12 bar. The issue for everybody is when you're not drawing fuel off but just sitting there. In that situation, you need our system’s very low heat leak.”

Fabrum has demonstrated a dwell or idle time of 20 hours for its composite tanks before a pressure is reached that requires venting of the boiled off H₂ gas. “But we expect that to reach 40-60 hours,” he says. “So much depends on the detailed design and what is actually required because tanks with a longer hold time could be undesirably heavy and/or costly.”

Another issue often discussed is the need to insulate all of the LH₂ fuel lines. “Regardless of whether you take liquid, gas or a mixture off the tank, you need to warm it up to the temperature required by the fuel cell,” says Reynolds. “So, the cryogenic H₂ has to go into a heat exchanger of some type and we always insulate the lines to that heat exchanger. For all of our commercial systems — including the mining applications — that insulation is fairly easy to achieve and while they're running, it stays above freezing point.”

Development timeline and certification

 

AMSL Aero’s Vertiia eVTOL (top) and Stralis Aircraft’s fuel cell propulsion retrofit for general aviation aircraft (bottom) are using LH₂ and Fabrum’s composite tanks to offer significantly longer range for zero emissions flight. Source | AMSL Aero, Stralis Aircraft

Fabrum expects to be flying three different aircraft with a composite LH₂ tank within the next 12 months. It’s working with AMSL Aero (Sydney, Australia) and its Vertiia H₂-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft and with Stralis Aircraft (Brisbane, Australia), supplying the LH₂ fuel system for its H₂-electric propulsion being certified as a retrofit for the Beech Bonanza. “We have a couple of other partners, including a helicopter company, that are looking at converting to LH₂ from their compressed H₂ gas systems,” notes Reynolds.

The next step is small commuter aircraft with up to 19 seats, which requires a significant amount of work for certification, but much less than aircraft with 70-100 seats. “That’s why ZeroAvia and a lot of other companies developing H₂ propulsion and aircraft are working under 19 seats,” says Reynolds. “Actually, developing the LH₂ tank is only a small part of the work required to achieve certification. The majority is all the other parts of the systems, including the fuel cells, and you have to have multiple redundancies on everything. We've designed our tanks with the certification process in mind, and we’re also supplying the whole system. We build the tanks, the heat exchangers that warm the LH₂ and the system that supplies pressure- and temperature-controlled warm gas to the fuel cell or combustion engine. The customer is typically the integrator and looks after everything from the warm gas onwards.”

Source | Alliance for Zero-Emission Aviation

Reynolds believes the first step of certifying smaller aircraft can be achieved by 2030, which is in line with the “Roadmap for the deployment of hybrid, electric and hydrogen flights in Europe” published in April 2026 by the Alliance for Zero-Emission Aviation (AZEA), which has more than 200 members including Airbus, Aciturri, Aernnova, Daher Aerospace, GKN Aerospace, IATA, Leonardo, MTU, Rolls-Royce, Safran, major airlines and airports, industry associations, regulatory bodies and more. That roadmap is targeting entry into service by commercial airliners for up to 100 passengers by 2040 and 20,000 hybrid, electric and H₂-powered aircraft by 2050.

He notes Fabrum has already started looking at certification, “because there's no point going down a technology path that can't be certified. We have a team that's already certified Jet A1 systems for Airbus, and we're taking that knowledge and that approach into the commercialization of our LH₂ fuel systems today.”

Tanks for space, thermoplastics, licensing for high volume production

The other industry that has a long history in using LH₂ tanks is space launch vehicles and they often do use carbon fiber. “The thermal cycling is nowhere near the same,” says Reynolds. “We’ve done work around these applications and even with reusable rockets, you might see 100 or 200 cycles. But that’s at the other end of the spectrum from an aircraft operating every day for years. The mission profile and specification for the equipment is just totally different.”

What about using the toughness of thermoplastic composites to fight microcracking when using carbon fiber at cryogenic temperatures? “I see a lot of challenges with using thermoplastic polymers, and while I think those are solvable, the question is whether they are able to be certified for commercial passenger aircraft. What you can do in a lab is very different than what is required to certify an aircraft fuel system for flight and put it into commercial service. So, at the moment, we’re using thermoset composite technology — not because it can't be done another way, but because the technical challenges involved and compliance pathway for those alternatives are substantial. We don’t believe carbon fiber is the right material for the primary LH₂ containment.”

According to the AZEA roadmap, the demand for lightweight, affordable composite LH₂ tanks could increase significantly over the next 10-15 years. Will Fabrum need to change its approach to deal with higher production volumes? “We recognize that we're not going to supply and ship from New Zealand at a large scale,” says Reynolds. “In our work with Tier 1 companies, we've discussed licensing to set up contract manufacturers where needed. Our systems are not dependent on expensive or exotic materials but instead use clever design and processes that are also practical and affordable. There are some things we do that I don't believe anyone else in the world does, but we can transfer that technology to licensed partners, who also won’t need to be aligned with a major carbon fiber supplier.”

Fabrum composites beyond LH₂

Fabrum does a lot work that uses composites but is unrelated to LH₂. “We're not a company that produces a set group of products,” says Reynolds, “but mainly have technologies that we apply to a wide range of areas.” He notes a customer in Europe that builds magnetic gearboxes for deep sea submersibles and other applications. Featuring embedded ferrites, the gearboxes hermetically seal the drive system and are impervious and leak tight at kilometers of ocean depth.

Fabrum has developed a wide range of superconducting technology using composites that handles thermal shock cycling, impulse pressure and vacuum with low heat loss and thin-walled construction. Demonstrated in generators, motors and transformers, its composite architecture is well-suited for aviation, space and industrial applications. Source | Fabrum

“We also build leak tight helium systems for companies working with electric motors, including production of motors for MagniX (Everett, Wash., U.S.).” Fabrum also works with superconducting systems, where their non-magnetic composite containment is used for devices that use a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma for nuclear fusion. “They all need high field magnetics and use a lot of composites for their support structures,” says Reynolds.

“We've also built superconducting transformers,” he continues. “We’ll supply those for a superconducting train project we’re working on as well as levitation cryostats. I'd say we're the only commercial company worldwide still in operation that builds superconducting equipment out of composites.”

Notably, Airbus has included superconductive systems as part of its technology roadmap for its ZEROe H2-powered aircraft. “Superconductivity is the next revolution,” says Reynolds, “ which will gain adoption once superconducting tape can be made affordably. When that happens, there will be a need for all these composite systems we make.”

These do use a bit of carbon fiber to dissipate static charge, but they mostly comprise glass fiber, says Reynolds. Here also, thermosets are preferred, he says, “because thermoplastics have a much higher coefficient of expansion, so, they're not as dimensionally stable, which is critical for the precision required in these applications.” The company will use a range of materials, including aramid fibers, titanium and other metals, and has developed broad in-house manufacturing and machining capabilities.

Derisking LH₂ tanks for the industry

If Fabrum has demonstrated composite LH₂ tanks that can be filled, emptied, refilled as well as sit idle and perform in flight, why are so many groups in Europe still developing their own LH₂ composite tanks? “Those projects support local industries,” says Reynolds. “We understand that and now have a team in Europe. It’s a challenge, for sure. But I think we also offer the ability to help derisk these systems. We’ve got an end-to-end solution in place and that's valuable because, especially in LH₂, if you don't do the right thing at each stage, you hamstring the following stage.”

He gives the mining trucks as an example, where Fabrum went from no one doing this to a system using up to 600 kilograms of LH₂ to power a 1.2-megawatt fuel cell with complex requirements on how it was dispensed. “We went with metallic tanks at that time, but as I said, we’re now ready to replace those with composites.”

Regarding how Airbus and the aviation industry is going to meet 9G crash load requirements, Reynolds readily acknowledges that carbon fiber will be needed. “Our approach has been to focus on the essential part that had to be proved, which is handling the LH₂ fuel,” he adds. “There is knowledge in the industry that can solve the other issues with structural integration, etc. But getting the LH₂ fuel handling to work as needed, reliably and with an affordable, lightweight system — that was key. And we’ve now proven that with a composite tank for small aircraft but we also know how to transfer half a ton of LH₂ in the shortest time possible with the least losses. We’ll continue to scale these systems for efficient refueling and zero emissions propulsion and also continue to advance certification.”

Source (All Images) | CW

CompositesWorld is hosting “CW Tech Days: Thermoplastic Composite Solutions for Aerospace Structures,” a free virtual workshop scheduled for June 24, 2026, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET. Sponsored by Composites One (Schaumburg, Ill., U.S.), Pacific Coast Composites (Tukwila, Wash., U.S.) and Albany Engineered Composites (AEC, Portsmouth, N.H., U.S.) the event will convene industry and research experts to examine the materials, processes and manufacturing strategies driving the transition to thermoplastic composite (TPC) parts production across commercial aerospace, defense and advanced air mobility (AAM) applications.

TPC are increasingly seen as transformative for next-generation aerospace and defense markets that require high-rate, high-volume materials and processes that move beyond autoclave and thermoset approaches — embracing improved efficiency, scalability, multifunctionality and recyclability. CW Tech Days will address topics including:

• The rise of oversized presses
• In situ thermoplastic automated fiber placement (AFP)
• Injection overmolding, specialized tooling for massive parts
• Advanced welding for assembly
• Robust process controls
• Case studies from groundbreaking aerospace, defense and AAM projects.

CW editor-in-chief Scott Francis will open the workshop, which includes four 30-minute technical presentations:

11:00-11:30 a.m. — One-shot tape sandwich injection molding for rotor blades

Lexington Peterson, business development manager for automotive and mobility at Engel Austria GmbH (Schwertberg, Austria), will present how combining continuous fiber-reinforced thermoplastic tapes with an injection molded thermoplastic core in a single automated step achieves cycle times below 45 seconds. The process molds aeroacoustic features — including serrated trailing edges — directly into lightweight drone and UAM rotor blade components, targeting automotive-level reproducibility and a reduced CO_₂ footprint versus thermoset benchmarks.

11:30-12:00 p.m. — Laser in situ layup with CONTIjoin 

Eric Pohl, a research associate at Fraunhofer (Munich, Germany), will introduce CONTIjoin, a CO_₂ laser-based continuous layup system with closed-loop online process control. The technology enables single-shot layup of multilayer laminates at widths of 500 millimeters and beyond, and has been applied to joining the world’s largest thermoplastic fuselage, rotor blades and other demanding structural components.

12:00-12:30 p.m. — Injection overmolding simulation for TPC parts 

Dr. Francesco Rondina of the ThermoPlastic Composites Research Center (TPRC; Enschede, Netherlands) will present a physics-based numerical framework for analyzing overmolded TPC parts. The framework evaluates process-induced defects — including wrinkles, warpage and poor interface adhesion — and structural performance, using advanced material modeling and data transfer between commercial finite element software packages.

1:00-1:30 p.m. — Induction welding for TPC assembly 

Pierre Rouch of KVE (The Hague, Netherlands) and Eric Jeanin of Pinette (Chalon-sur-Saône, France) will address induction welding equipment and methods for assembling thermoplastic composite structures. 

1:30-2:00 p.m. — TPC solutions for larger aerospace structures 

David Leach and Wade Bowles will close the event by addressing the challenges of scaling TPC adoption from small secondary components to larger primary structures. Their presentation will cover material form selection, fabrication methods, tooling, design for manufacturing, welded assembly and the need for TPC-specific inspection and finishing approaches distinct from thermoset methods.

Source (All Images) | Daher

Daher (Nantes, France) has completed a critical structural validation of its welded carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastic (CFRTP) wing rib demonstrator, with testing at the Cetim (Saint-Étienne, France) facility confirming the part survived beyond ultimate load without failure under combined loading conditions representative of a single-aisle aircraft wing.

According to Daher, the rib was subjected simultaneously to 25 tonnes of compression and 25 tonnes of shear on a test bench co-designed with Daher and built by Cetim specifically for the program. The result validates the team’s ability to design welded thermoplastic composite (TPC) structural components to aircraft-grade load requirements — a meaningful step toward application on future single-aisle programs.

The rib is manufactured from Victrex (Cleveleys, U.K.) AE 250 UD tape and produced using two patented processes: Daher’s Direct Stamping process, which eliminates the consolidation step between layup and stamping to reduce cycle time and cost, and the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology’s (LIST, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg) infrared welding process, which assembles two L-shaped CFRTP elements into a finished T-shaped rib without mechanical fasteners. The rib reaches up to 64 plies (12 millimeters) in thickness to meet the structural demands of highly loaded wing positions.

The program is a CORAC project funded by the DGAC (French Civil Aviation Authority) and carried out in collaboration with Victrex, LIST, AniForm Engineering B.V. (Enschede, Netherlands) and Cetim. Daher notes that ongoing analyses from the test campaign will be used to identify further mass and cost optimization opportunities ahead of potential application on next-generation single-aisle aircraft.

The Highly Loaded Thermoplastic Wing Rib demonstrator, launched in 2021, was recognized with a 2026 JEC Composites Innovation Award in the Aerospace – Parts category — one of 11 winners announced at JEC World 2026 in Paris. CW has previously covered the program’s manufacturing innovations in detail, including how direct stamping and infrared welding enable the 64-ply rib. Published results from that program show the welded rib design delivers a 22% weight reduction versus aluminum, 15% lower assembly costs and 25% shorter production cycles compared with bolted assemblies, along with an estimated 12.5-tonne CO_₂ reduction per rib over the lifetime of a single-aisle aircraft.

Read more at Daher’s LinkedIn post.

Source | Dassault Aviation

On June 19, Dassault Aviation’s (Paris, France) all-new Falcon 10X business jet successfully completed its first flight, demonstrating the program’s maturity and marking the launch of the flight test campaign. The aircraft is powered by an all-composite wing and an equally composites-intensive Rolls-Royce Pearl 10X engine.

Test Pilot Sébastien Dupont de Dinechin and copilot Fabrice Dougnac took off from runway 23 at Bordeaux-Mérignac at 11.10 a.m. for a 2-hour and 30 minute flight. The pilots evaluated handling qualities and systems at 15,000 feet, then retracted the landing gear and all movable surfaces before climbing to 40,000 feet, where they accelerated to Mach 0.82. They returned to Bordeaux-Mérignac for a smooth landing at 1.40 p.m.

The first aircraft will be soon followed into the air by a second test aircraft nearing completion, and by a third that is being outfitted with a full interior and will be used mainly for systems and cabin functional and reliability testing.

Dassault Aviation contends that it is the only aircraft manufacturer in the world to have a completely new aircraft in flight in 2026. Dassault’s dual expertise — in civil and defense — is a long-term strength for the company.

The 10X’s engines deliver more than 18,000 pounds of thrust. It features advanced flight control technology and advanced structures including a single Smart Throttle controlling both engines; a more advanced head-up display (HUD); an automatic recovery mode for use in the event of an unusual attitude; an automatic terrain avoidance mode; an automatic windshear recovery mode; and additional fighter-inspired features that make the aircraft easier to hand-fly in challenging environments.

The Falcon 10X offers a highly spacious cabin. It has the largest cabin cross-section of any business jet, the company says, with a width of 9 feet, 1 inch and a height of 6 feet, 8 inches. It seats up to 19 passengers in three or four living zones, each with individual temperature control. The objective is to provide more personal space, comfort and productivity.

To create such a large cabin while achieving long-range efficiency, the aircraft incorporates new aerodynamic shaping in the nose, fuselage fairing and tail to reduce drag. It also features a new composite wing for improved aerodynamics and reduced weight.

The 10X will fly 7,500 nautical miles at Mach 0.85, connecting city pairs that include New York to Shanghai, Los Angeles to Sydney, Paris to Santiago and São Paulo to Dubai.

The Aurora spaceplane. Source (All Images) | Dawn Aerospace

On June 16, Dawn Aerospace (ChristChurch, New Zealand) closed its Series B funding round, raising $25 million at a $195 million post-money valuation. The round was led by venture capitalist Balerion Space Ventures (Dallas, Texas, U.S.).

Since its Series A in 2022, Dawn Aerospace has become a key provider of nontoxic chemical propulsion worldwide with 200 thrusters in space on more than 50 satellites. Dawn has also flown supersonic with the Aurora suborbital spaceplane, a composites-intensive vehicle — making it the first privately developed aircraft to fly supersonic since the Concorde, and one of only two supersonic unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating globally, according to the company.

These feats are all part of the New Zealand-Dutch company’s mission to build scalable, sustainable space transportation to unlock the economic potential of space and solve critical national security challenges.

Commercially, revenue has grown from less than $3 million in FY22 to well over $15 million with growth of more than 90% in the last 12 months and cash-flow positive operations. “Raising capital is about accelerating the growth of programs we have extremely high conviction in, and that our customers are desperate for,” says Stefan Powell, CEO of Dawn Aerospace. This financial momentum further coincides with the global surge in aerospace and defense investment.

Dawn’s technologies now support more than two dozen missions, predominantly for U.S., European and Japanese customers, such as satellite constellations and lunar programs. Missions span a range of operator types, from commercial Earth observation providers to government customers such as the Royal Netherlands Air Force, the U.S. Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) and the Royal New Zealand Navy.

Series B funding round and partners.

In the next 12 months, Aurora is expected to become the first vehicle to fly above the Kármán line twice in a day. Dawn will deliver this Mach 3.7 capability to the state of Oklahoma, with operations beginning in 2027 under a $17 million partnership signed in 2025.

In 2028, Dawn plans to demonstrate in-orbit refueling of its satellite propulsion systems. The service, dubbed “Loop,” is central to the company’s broader vision for reusable in-space logistics, and already has backing from multiple companies, with Dawn refueling ports aboard Royal Netherlands Air Force satellites.

This latest Series B funding will directly finance Dawn’s global rollout, scaling commercial and operational teams in the U.S. and Europe to support its expanding international customer base.

Funding was backed by a global syndicate of investors. Participants include Mana Ventures (U.S.), ANA Future Frontier Fund (general partner: Global Brain Corp.) (JP), Green Eight Capital (U.S.), Seven Peak Ventures (U.S.), NZVC (NZ), Alpha Funds (U.S.), Gaingels (U.S.), Crosscourt (U.S.) and individual investors including Tim Ferriss, Michael Hohenester, Markus Hildinger and Yishan Wong, as well as existing investors Icehouse Ventures, Aera Climate and Frontier Fund, GD1 and Shasta Ventures.

Noncontact atmospheric pressure plasma pretreatment of a CFRP surface. Source | Fraunhofer IFAM

The Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM (Bremen, Germany) has completed the HYTANK project, developing a suite of manufacturing and joining technologies for large-format, double-walled liquid hydrogen (LH₂) tanks made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) for potential use in zero-emission aviation. Results were presented at ILA 2026.

The project — formally titled “Development of Coating, Joining and Assembly Processes for the Manufacture of a CFRP LH_₂ Tank for Emission-Free Flight” and funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy under the LuFo VI-3 program — was led by Airbus Operations GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) and included six additional Germany-based partners: Broetje-Automation GmbH (Rastede), the German Aerospace Center (DLR, Cologne), Fiber Institute Bremen eV (Bremen), FFT Produktionssysteme GmbH & Co. KG (Fulda), the Fraunhofer Society for the Advancement of Applied Research eV and the Dresden University of Technology.

According to Fraunhofer IFAM, LH_₂ is a candidate propellant for future commercial aircraft, but its storage requirements are demanding: tanks must remain structurally sound and leak-tight at temperatures as low as -253°C while withstanding mechanical and thermal loads. CFRP offers a favorable weight profile for such structures, but cryogenic temperatures, pressure cycling and the use of dissimilar materials require tailored design and process solutions.

The HYTANK consortium addressed those requirements across three parallel research areas: surface pretreatment, barrier coating development and automated assembly.

Surface pretreatment

Achieving reliable adhesion on CFRP surfaces is complicated by release agent residues left over from the manufacturing process. The project evaluated four pretreatment methods — vacuum suction blasting, atmospheric pressure plasma treatment, vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) light irradiation and laser treatment — with three proving fundamentally suitable.

Fraunhofer IFAM notes that optimal method selection depends on factors including component geometry, CFRP material type and the type and quantity of release agents present. Dry, noncontact processes showed particular promise: atmospheric pressure plasma treatment improved wettability and adhesion without significant thermal or mechanical stress on the substrate; VUV irradiation activated the surface through polar functional group insertion; and laser treatment enabled precise cleaning and surface activation.

Barrier coatings

A milestone toward future serial production of lightweight CFRP hydrogen tanks for flight operations — a flexible, modular, automated assembly system. Sources | FFT Produktionssysteme GmbH & Co. KG and Fraunhofer IFAM

Fraunhofer IFAM developed barrier coating systems designed to reduce gas permeability in polymer-based tank structures — limiting hydrogen permeation outward and restricting ingress of atmospheric gases, such as oxygen and moisture. The coatings are based on polymeric binders with integrated barrier pigments; the layered structure lengthens the diffusion path for gas molecules, reducing permeation. Performance was evaluated through permeation measurements, cryocycling tests and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis. Fraunhofer IFAM reports that the coatings can, in principle, be applied to complex geometries using established spray application processes, supporting potential transfer to industrial production.

Automated assembly

For the assembly work, Fraunhofer IFAM developed an approach for a double-walled tank approximately 6 meters in length, incorporating an inner and outer tank shell, integrated internal structure and insulation. Large component dimensions, non-rigid CFRP cylinders, tight tolerances and long adhesive cure times required a scalable, precisely coordinated assembly concept. The project selected a modular assembly system on linear axes with parallel handling and joining operations.

A validation platform with linearly movable mounting systems was built and metrologically qualified to study key joining variables including structural adhesive behavior, overlap and gap ratios, and joining partner compression. A robot-guided end-effector with roller guidance and a spring mechanism was developed to maintain a constant nozzle distance on curved joining surfaces during automated adhesive application. After adhesive application, joining partners were automatically positioned and joined via a rail system, with heating mats used to accelerate cure.

Fraunhofer IFAM reports that automated machining, positioning and adhesive bonding processes for large-format CFRP LH_₂ tank structures are fundamentally achievable, and that further development of tolerance management strategies, reproducible gap adjustment and process-reliable adhesive application will be required for industrial implementation.

Moreover, the technologies developed under HYTANK have potential relevance beyond aviation, including maritime and hydrogen infrastructure applications.

GKN Aerospace has signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to explore the advancement of large-scale additive manufacturing for aerostructures.

The CRADA focuses on LMD-w (laser metal deposition with wire), a directed energy deposition (DED) process. This technology provides high deposition rates for titanium alloys reducing material waste and costs compared to traditional powder-based methods according to the company.

The partnership aims to develop processes that meet requirements of airworthiness certification for aerostructures.

GKN Aerospace provides engineering and manufacturing for aircraft and engines to OEMs and operators. The company operates globally with 15,000 employees across 35 facilities in 12 countries.

Robot arm component prototype made using Xycomp DLF. Source | Greene Tweed

Greene Tweed (Kulpsville, Pa., U.S.) has developed a rapid prototyping process for its Xycomp DLF discontinuous long fiber thermoplastic composite (TPC) materials. This new process helps aerospace customers accelerate metal replacement development projects through faster testing and validation, significantly reducing lead times and costs while expanding access to high-performance composites in new markets including advanced air mobility (AAM) and defense.

Learn more about Greene Tweed and Xycomp DLF:

• Cutting Engine Weight via Thermoplastic Engine Guide Vanes
• CW Talks Podcast Episode 55: Dave Noblin, Greene Tweed
• VIDEO: Greene Tweed Engineers a TPC Engine Guide Vane

Xycomp DLF components are engineered for high performance to replace metals, delivering tailored stiffness, strength and weight savings. Greene Tweed reports that its new process cuts DLF prototype lead times by ≈50% compared to traditional production methods through a proprietary approach that optimizes the tool design and balance between machined and net-molded features, while maintaining production-representative material and part properties. The result is quicker access to functional parts, with lower upfront tooling costs and greater design flexibility before production.

“Greene Tweed recognized the need for a faster, more cost-effective way to support the development of lightweight, high-performance components for customers,” says George Rawa, general manager, structural and engineered components at Greene Tweed. “This process expedites the timeline to evaluate Xycomp composites in real-world applications by putting production-quality parts in engineers’ hands in a fraction of the time.”

Key innovations behind Greene Tweed’s rapid prototyping include:

• Optimized mold design. A balance of machined and net-molded features reduces tooling complexity and speeds up production.
• Streamlined parallel processes. Completing part, tool and fixture designs concurrently compresses timelines.
• In-House expertise. A hands-on approach ensures precision and quality, with mold fit-ups completed in 1-2 days.
• Rapid, low-cost iteration. Customers can test, refine and optimize components through phased evaluations with lower cost and readily modifiable tools.

Rapid prototyping is helping to expand TPC adoption across aerospace, AAM, defense, mobile robotics and energy. In AAM, customers are using Xycomp DLF components for lightweight, custom-engineered applications for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) platforms, with rapid design iteration and close technical collaboration between customers and Greene Tweed engineers, fast-tracking the path from concept to reality.

Greene Tweed will also host the webinar, “Solving Aerospace Weight and Prototype Bottlenecks with Xycomp Thermoplastic Composite Components,” on Sep. 30, 2026. Register here to attend.

Source | Heatcon Composite Systems

Heatcon Composite Systems (Seattle, Wash., U.S.), a global aerospace composite repair solutions provider, is expanding its presence into the Philippines through the establishment of Heatcon Asia Inc., marking continued global growth and a committment to supporting evolving aerospace needs across the Asia-Pacific region.

Following the successful approval of its lease application by the Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) management committee, business development committee and board of directors, Heatcon Asia Inc. will establish a facility in the Clark Freeport Zone on a 2,670- square-meter property under a 25-year renewable lease agreement. The facility will serve as a key hub for supporting Heatcon’s rapidly growing installed base across the Asia-Pacific region and will enhance the company’s ability to deliver localized service and technical support.

Founded in 1978, Heatcon has been at the forefront of aerospace composite repair technology, materials, training and technical support to aircraft manufacturers, defense organizations, commercial airlines, and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) providers worldwide. Heatcon is also a trusted supplier to Boeing.

Operations at the Phillipines facility are expected to begin in Q2 2027.

Source | Fraunhofer IWS, Leibniz-Institut für Verbundwerkstoffe (IVW)

Fraunhofer IGCV, Fraunhofer IFAM and Fraunhofer IWS are contributing to the 3-year (2023-2026) HESTIA project: Ultra-high-efficiency, Sustainable Fuselage Shells Made of Thermoplastic Fiber-reinforced Composite for a Future Zero-emission Aircraft. This collaborative research initiative funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) focuses on developing lightweight, resource-efficient fuselage shell technologies for next-generation, climate-neutral aircraft.

As one of six interconnected partner projects, HESTIA is targeting the development of thermoplastic composite (TPC) fuselage structures designed to offset the additional mass associated with emerging zero-emission propulsion systems. By reducing structural weight while improving manufacturing efficiency, the project aims to support more sustainable aircraft production and operation.

The technologies being developed through HESTIA are intended to support scalable manufacturing. Project partners note that the laser-enabled manufacturing approaches under development could also be adapted for composite semi-finished goods and components in other industrial sectors beyond aerospace.

Within the project, Fraunhofer IWS lists additional partners include:

• Airbus Operations GmbH (consortium lead)
• Airbus Aerostructures
• CirComp GmbH
• Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V.
• Leibniz-Institut für Verbundwerkstoffe GmbH.

Fraunhofer IWS specifically is advancing three primary research areas centered on automated processing and multifunctional composite integration, while Fraunhofer IGCV and Fraunhofer IFAM are dedicated to other themes that partially contribute to the overarching HESTIA project. For instance, the IFAM is responsible for the development of vitrimers, while the IGCV collaborates on comparative studies regarding the influence of laser wavelengths. These efforts also contribute to developing innovative solutions for a climate-neutral aircraft, emphasizing aspects like manufacturing technologies and material efficiency.

CONTIjoin, AFP and vitrimers

One project focus is the further development of the CONTIjoin process for joining thermoplastic multidirectional laminate semi-finished products. Showcased in the right-hand join of the upper and lower fuselage shells in the Clean Aviation MFFD project, the process is now being adapted for additional material systems, including various unidirectional (UD) tape as well as vitrimers, which are polymers that cross-link like thermosets but can be reheated, reformed and recycled like thermoplastics.

FTIR spectrum of high-performance thermoplastic polymer with and without carbon fiber reinforcement shows low absorption of matrix polymer at diode laser wavelength and high absorption at CO₂ laser wavelength. Source | Fraunhofer IWS

Unlike conventional layup systems that use solid-state or diode lasers absorbed primarily by carbon fibers, the CONTIjoin process uses CO_₂ laser radiation absorbed directly by the polymer matrix. This reportedly enables improved thermal process control during joining operations.

Drapeability and integrated LSP

HESTIA researchers are also investigating alternative perforation methods for fiber-reinforced composite semi-finished products. Perforation is used to locally interrupt carbon fiber reinforcement to improve drapeability during AFP and thermal forming processes. Current mechanical perforation methods can result in significant tool wear, prompting interest in noncontact, laser-based alternatives.

A tape test demonstrates strong adhesion of grid-pattern copper coating to a carbon fiber/thermoplastic substrate. Source | Fraunhofer IWS

A third research area addresses electrical continuity in integrated lightning protection systems (LSP). The project is developing an automated process chain capable of electrically bridging discontinuities in copper mesh layers located at fuselage joints or repaired sections. Following laser surface functionalization of the TPC, a conductive copper layer is applied using thermal spraying and structured into a grid pattern analogous to conventional LSP mesh materials.

IVW window frames using rCF

Another partner is Leibniz-Institut für Verbundwerkstoffe GmbH (IVW, Kaiserslautern), the non-profit Institute for Composite Materials at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern. IVW is targeting material- and energy-efficient production of aircraft window frames using a TPC material made with recycled carbon fiber (rCF) (project funding reference 20W2203E). The characteristic properties of staple fibers are used in a specific way to make optimal use of the mechanical properties of the window frame structure. The implementation of this innovative material offers great potential for reducing CO_₂ emissions in the production of aircraft components, while improving material efficiency and lightweight construction quality.

The starting material for the window frames are staple fiber yarns consisting of polyaryletherketone (PAEK) filaments and rCF with a length >50 millimeters. These are formed into tapes in a specially developed impregnation and stretching unit at IVW. The result is a consolidated rCF tape that contains oriented, discontinuous reinforcing fibers. This morphology enables wave-free placement due to the sliding of the fibers, even in the production of components with complex, curved geometries, such as a window frame while alignment along the curved load paths maximizes structural efficiency.

Topology-optimized fiber orientation modeled for a thermoplastic composite (TPC) aircraft window frame. Source | Leibniz-Institut für Verbundwerkstoffe (IVW)

The load-bearing structure can then be functionalized through overmolding, ensuring optimal transfer of external loads into the structural insert. This not only enables improved load distribution, but also significantly increases the durability and reliability of the entire structure. Finite element modeling (FEM) is being used to optimize fiber paths and force introduction geometries, followed by manufacturing of  prototype window frames and physical testing to validate simulation and design.

IVW lists additional partners, including Airbus Operations GmbH, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V., Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung, Airbus Aerostructures GmbH and Albany International.

Hexcel breaks gound on new application center at Wichita State’s NIAR ATLAS facility. Source (All Images) | Hexcel Corp.

On May 28 Hexcel Corp. (Stamford, Conn., U.S.) broke ground on the Hexcel Applications Center at Wichita State University’s (WSU) National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR), a facility designed to help the advanced composites supplier and its aerospace customers solve one of the industry’s most pressing challenges: producing composite structures at the rates that next-generation narrowbody aircraft will demand.

The new center will be located within NIAR’s Advanced Technologies Lab for Aerospace Systems (ATLAS) on Wichita State’s south campus, occupying what the institute is calling “Sector B” — a companion to the existing ATLAS Sector A.

Tom Gentile, chairman, CEO and president, Hexcel Corp. 

In an interview with CompositesWorld, Hexcel chairman, CEO and president Tom Gentile said the partnership was conceived in early 2025 around a specific industry inflection point: the expected migration of composite primary structures from widebodies and military platforms onto the next generation of single-aisle commercial aircraft.

Composites have delivered weight, range, fuel-burn and maintenance benefits on programs like the F-35, Boeing 787 and Airbus A350, Gentile noted, but production rates on those programs are comparatively modest. A 737- or A320-replacement program would require build rates in the range of 50-75 aircraft per month — a step-change that current composites manufacturing approaches were not designed to support.

“This investment represents a pivotal step in how we support aerospace and defense customers, from material innovation through advanced manufacturing and structural realization,” Gentile said in the company’s announcement. “By combining Hexcel’s materials science and application development expertise with NIAR’s world-class automated processing capabilities, we are creating a powerful ecosystem that accelerates innovation and delivers practical, manufacturable solutions for our customers.”

ATLAS, led by Dr. Waruna Seneviratne, is on the leading edge of high-rate composite production research and is continuously looking to expand its capabilities. Hexcel is contributing an automated fiber placement (AFP) machine and a 50-foot autoclave as part of the partnership.

The two organizations announced their intent to work together at the 2025 Paris Air Show alongside WSU president Rick Muma, NIAR executive vice president for research and defense programs John Tomblin, Seneviratne and U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.). Over the following year, the concept evolved from an equipment transfer into a dedicated Hexcel-branded applications center inside a new NIAR building.

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran calls Hexcel’s new application an important milestone for aerospace and defense manufacturing.

While the Paris announcement pegged Hexcel’s contribution at more than $10 million in equipment — principally the AFP machine and autoclave — Tomblin told CW the total equipment package in Sector B will be considerably larger.

The U.S. Air Force is also contributing a snap-cure production capability, and NIAR will add assembly, trim and drill equipment to close a longstanding gap in its AFP workflow. (As Tomblin noted, ATLAS today can lay up very large parts on its AFP cell but currently sends them elsewhere for trim and drill operations.) NIAR is also upgrading the head on an existing MTorres (Torres de Elorz, Navarra, Spain) gantry-style tape layer to give it AFP capability. All told, Tomblin estimated, roughly $30 million in equipment will populate the new sector.

NIAR executive vice president for research and defense programs John Tomblin says Hexcel’s new application center expands the capabilities, further enhancing ATLAS as an R&D hub for experimentation. 

Tomblin said the new application centers folds into NIAR’s model — borrowing a phrase from Seneviratne as “a makerspace for industry,” where OEMs, Tier 1s and new entrants can come in to experiment with fabrication techniques, joining methods (welding, bonding, mechanical fastening) and combined material/process trade studies before committing to capital on their own factory floors.

The exception, Tomblin said, would be urgent defense demand signals — “speed to operational readiness” requests where the military needs hundreds of parts on a compressed timeline.

One specific technical thrust Gentile highlighted is dry fiber AFP layup paired with resin infusion or RTM, an out-of-autoclave route that is increasingly attractive for high-rate narrowbody structures. The team plans to use the center to develop dry tape AFP processes for monolithic structures that integrate skins, stringers and frames — work Gentile said is unlikely to be replicated elsewhere in the industry at this scale.

While next-generation narrowbodies are the headline driver, the center is being designed to serve a much broader customer base. Tomblin pointed to ongoing ATLAS work on expendable and attritable weapon systems, space manufacturing and eVTOL airframes — all programs that need composite solutions at rates and cost points that legacy aerospace processes can’t deliver.

Gentile noted that Hexcel has been working with NIAR for years on customer-specific demonstration projects with Boeing, Airbus, Embraer and newer entrants such as JetZero, and that NIAR’s National Center for Advanced Materials Performance (NCAMP) shared-database model has become the de facto first stop for drone, eVTOL and other emerging airframers seeking qualified materials. Tomblin added that NCAMP continues to expand into thermoplastics, chopped fiber systems for secondary structures such as window frames and structural repair materials — all of which the Hexcel partnership is expected to feed.

Some of the donated Hexcel equipment is already on-site at NIAR, and the upgraded MTorres gantry system is in place pending the building’s completion. The 50-foot autoclave will be transferred once the facility is ready to receive it — Tomblin estimated roughly 8-9 months from groundbreaking, though he noted NIAR’s track record on standing up new facilities is significantly faster than industry norms.

One of the Graco HFR machines being installed. Source | Infinite Composites

Infinite Composites (Tulsa, Okla., U.S.) has just leveled up production capacity, with funding provided by private investors, with support by the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) and the Oklahoma Department of Commerce’s OIEP program enabling this expansion.  

The investment includes:

• Two McClean Anderson four-axis filament winders (up to 72 inches in diameter/45 feet in length).
• Two Yaskawa Motoman MPX2600 robots (six-plus-axis) on 20- and 45-foot rail systems.
• Three Graco Inc. hydraulic fixed ratio (HFR) metering machines for robotic, high-pressure, heated application of high-viscosity polymer coatings.

All of which will expand what Infinite Composites can build — and how fast it can deliver — across large composite structures, automated processing and protective coating systems. “Infinite Composites is making big moves to support our ever-growing customer base,” says Infinite Composites founder and CEO Matt Villarreal. “These new capabilities will enable the automated production of large composite tanks, rocket motor casings, tubes and other high-performance structures.”

Founded in 2010, the company is known for designing and manufacturing lightweight, linerless Type 5 composite pressure vessels, which are used in aerospace, defense and transportation. Read “Infinite Composites: Type V tanks for space, hydrogen, automotive and more.”

Read more through this LinkedIn post and about Infinite Composites.

Factory 1 manufacturing and final assembly smart factory rendering. Source (All Images) | JetZero

JetZero (Long Beach, Calif., U.S.) broke ground June 15 on its first manufacturing and final assembly campus in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. — an 8-million-square-foot facility on more than 600 acres where the company plans to produce its Z4 blended wing body (BWB) aircraft. Expected to create 14,500 jobs over the next decade, the project will invest $4.7 billion in the Triad region. Construction in Greensboro begins immediately, with hiring expected to ramp in phases over the next decade as the facility comes online.

Designed for the unserved commercial middle market, with a 250-passenger capacity and range of up to 5,000 nautical miles, the Z4 reportedly offers up to 50% more fuel efficiency than comparably-sized tube-and-wing aircraft and an elevated passenger experience that fits readily fit into today’s airport infrastructure.

Leveraging composites

Factory 1.

The airframe uses carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites in the fuselage and wing structures. Hexcel (Stamford, Conn., U.S.) is qualifying its carbon fiber and resin infusion technology portfolio for the all-wing structural demonstration under the FAA’s FAST program, which is focused on composites manufacturing technologies capable of supporting advanced non-cylindrical pressure vessel designs at high production rates.

3M (St. Paul, Minn., U.S.) also has invested in JetZero and is contributing materials science expertise across lightning protection, structural assembly and thermal acoustic solutions.

Collins Aerospace (Charlotte, N.C., U.S.) will design and build the nacelle structures — inlet, fan cowl, fan duct, fairings and engine support structure — drawing on its experience with the Boeing 787, Airbus A350, A320neo and A220. The design also incorporates fiber optic sensors embedded throughout the airframe for structural health monitoring (SHM), enabling condition-based maintenance that could reduce costs by 30%.

A BWB demonstrator aircraft is being built with Northrop Grumman and its Scaled Composites subsidiary, with first flight targeted for 2027.

Digital-first, AI-native smart factory

JetZero’s Greensboro plant will be designed using advanced digital and AI native platforms developed in collaboration withSiemens Digital Industries Software (Plano, Texas, U.S.) and Deloitte (New York, N.Y., U.S.). These platforms and tools enable engineers to build a complete digital twin of the factory before any concrete is poured — testing how machines, people and materials will move through the building, and making changes on a screen rather than on a job site. That flexibility is reportedly rare in aerospace manufacturing and will make the Greensboro facility efficient and highly adaptable.

“By pairing advanced AI and digital tools with our deep operational and industry experience, we’re helping JetZero set a new standard for manufacturing speed, quality and scale,” Kelly Herod, chief client officer, Deloitte. “Our work with JetZero brings automation and AI together with data strategies informed by our experience at The Smart Factory by Deloitte @ Wichita — connecting design, the shop floor and the workforce.”

Renovation plans for new Greensboro HQ, The Hub

The Hub — the new JetZero headquarters. 

JetZero also announced renovation plans for The Hub, a 108,000-square-foot headquarters building on the campus complementing the production and final assembly campus for the Z4. The three-story structure, originally built in 1988, will be redesigned into a highly collaborative workplace designed to attract world-class talent and support the rapid pace of innovation required to bring a new commercial aircraft to market. Renovation begins in June 2026 with completion expected in early 2027. CW previously reported on JetZero’s selection of the Greensboro site.

The design balances open collaboration environments, focused workspaces, project rooms, innovation zones, executive briefing areas and social gathering spaces. Throughout the building, employees and visitors will experience a workplace that celebrates JetZero’s mission, technology and culture while fostering transparency and cross-functional collaboration.

Anchoring the experience is a dramatic three-story lobby atrium that serves as the cultural heart of the building, creating a memorable first impression for employees, partners, customers, investors and future recruits.

Source | Deutsche Aircraft

Deutsche Aircraft (Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany) and Hexcel (Stamford, Conn., U.S.) have signed a long‑term industrial partnership and supply agreement focused on advanced composite solutions for the D328eco, a next‑generation regional turboprop designed, certified and industrialized in Europe.

The agreement was formalized at the ILA Berlin Air Show. Under it Hexcel and Deutsche Aircraft will collaborate closely to integrate advanced composite solutions into the D328eco airframe. The materials will be engineered to meet the program’s stringent mechanical, weight and environmental requirements, supporting performance and sustainability objectives. The composite solutions will be applied in primary and secondary aircraft structures, where weight reduction, durability and fatigue resistance are critical. 

The D328eco represents a modernized evolution of the Dornier 328 turboprop, integrating new propulsion systems, state-of-the-art avionics and optimized aerostructures to reduce environmental impact and life cycle emissions. The collaboration between Deutsche Aircraft and Hexcel supports certification compliance, industrialization readiness and long-term maintainability.

In 2025, Aernnova was confirmed to supply the D328eco’s composite empennage.

Source | Getty Images

Massivit (Lod, Israel and Alpharetta, Ga., U.S.) 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.”

Mastrex’s MX300 industrial metal 3D printer is engineered to support manufacturers requiring precision, scalability and dependable production performance across demanding applications.

Built on laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) technology, the MX300 is designed to bridge the gap between prototyping and full-scale metal part production. The system combines a 300 × 300 × 350 mm build volume with dual 500W lasers, enabling faster production speeds while maintaining the accuracy and surface quality required for industrial manufacturing.

The MX300 is compatible with titanium, stainless steel, aluminum, cobalt-chrome, Inconel and more. The system is engineered to handle both detailed geometries and larger industrial applications while maintaining dimensional accuracy and repeatability.

The MX300 is designed for manufacturers and machine shops engaged in new product development, manufacturing of complex components and investigating new applications, particularly in the aerospace, defense and medical markets. These sectors continue to demand access to advanced technologies and materials to meet the requirements of critical applications and shorter lead times. 

The MX300 also focuses on operational efficiency. Its high-throughput architecture and streamlined workflow are designed to simplify production environments and reduce downtime, helping manufacturers integrate metal additive manufacturing more effectively into existing operations.

As demand for industrial metal additive manufacturing continues to grow, manufacturers are increasingly looking for systems capable of delivering reliable production performance without unnecessary complexity. The MX300 was developed with that balance in mind, offering industrial-scale capability in a platform designed for long-term production use.

Source | MRF

The McNAIR Center for Aerospace Innovation and Research at the University South Carolina’s Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing has announced the installation and immediate availability of a Materials Research Furnaces (MRF, Allenstown, N.H., U.S.) Furnace System at its 42,000-square-foot advanced manufacturing facility in Columbia, South Carolina. Procurement of this new furnace was made possible through OSW ManTech funding with program management support provided by NSWC 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 MRF, the McNAIR Center has installed an ultra-high temperature furnace system capable of 2400°C operation. This advanced furnace system, featuring an internal retort measuring a 28-inch diameter and 30-inch height, and boasting approximately 8 cubic feet of usable hot zone, represents a significant leap forward in materials processing technology.

What makes this system truly distinctive is its ability to perform pyrolysis, densification and graphitization processes for aerospace composite components and advanced ceramics. Designed with precision thermal and atmosphere environments, the furnace will support the development and enhancement of high-performance materials, including carbon-carbon (C/C), carbon-SiC and SiC-SiC composites. These materials are critical for next-generation aerospace applications, where strength, durability and
heat resistance are paramount.

Like all composites manufacturing systems at the McNAIR Center, this MRF Furnace is fully integrated with comprehensive data acquisition and power monitoring systems. These tools enable real-time evaluation of processing parameters and energy inputs, providing immediate feedback on how pyro/carb/graph conditions influence final part performance. This capability supports both research validation and production-scale process
optimization.

McNAIR expects this MRF Furnace to play a critical role in next-generation advanced manufacturing initiatives, addressing the increasing demand for high-performance materials in aerospace, defense and other advanced industries. This partnership highlights the synergy between academia and industry, showcasing how collaboration can accelerate technological progress and deliver tangible benefits to society. Further strengthening the Center’s ability to support rapid advanced manufacturing strategies.

The McNAIR Center is making the MRF system available to industry and government partners for:

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

By expanding the boundaries of ultra-high temperature furnace capabilities, the McNAIR Center continues to expand its role as a national resource for advanced composite and aerospace manufacturing innovation.

Industry and government partners interested in using the MRF Furnace 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 or visit their website at sc.edu/mcnair for more information.

Mubea Aviation/Airbus Atlantic partnership kick-off in Ergene, Türkiye. Source | Mubea Aviation

Mubea Aviation (Schwerin, Germany), an accredited systems supplier to the global aviation industry, has been awarded a contract for the serial supply of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite structural components by Airbus Atlantic (Colomiers, France) for the A350 program.

This award highlights Mubea Aviation’s strong expertise in high-performance composite technologies for aviation, and will strengthen its role as a trusted partner within the Airbus supply chain. 

Mubea Aviation’s corporate information highlights a focus on automated composite layup, prepreg autoclave technology, RTM processes and hybrid structures that combine metals with carbon fiber.

The project was formally launched during a kick-off meeting at Mubea Aviation’s facility in Ergene, Türkiye, bringing together the full cross-functional team. 

More information can be found on LinkedIn.

Sources | DLR and Airbus

At ILA Berlin 2026, Airbus Helicopters (Donauwörth, Germany), as project lead of the NEUTRON research initiative (2022-2025), presented a full-scale composite engine deck demonstrator developed with the DLR Institute of Structures and Design (Stuttgart and Augsburg). Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, the project addresses weight and thermal challenges introduced by next-generation helicopter propulsion systems.

To replace traditional metallic decks, Airbus Helicopters engineered a novel multi-material concept that decouples structural load paths from thermal insulation. While primary propulsion loads are transmitted via three precision titanium fittings, a co-cured ceramic matrix composite (CMC) firewall isolates the carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) airframe. This integrated CMC barrier withstands continuous operating temperatures up to 1100°C, fulfilling strict engine-bay fire protection and certification standards.

Crucially, the entire assembly employs a fastener-free design methodology. Eliminating mechanical fasteners reduces weight, minimizes localized stress concentrations and streamlines manufacturing. Beyond the engine deck, Airbus Helicopters evaluated structural layouts to integrate high-voltage battery modules, satisfying crashworthiness and energy-absorption requirements under severe impact conditions.

To productionize Airbus Helicopters’ design, the DLR developed a semi-automated manufacturing framework featuring four key technological bricks: (i) A robotic pick-and-place system with optical contour detection and in-line fiber-angle monitoring; (ii) an adaptive diaphragm-preforming station for net-shape consolidation; (iii) the “Shepard” data framework for digital twin quality tracking; (iv) and an out-of-oven (OOO) interdiffusion-based joining process that structurally bonds cured CFRP subcomponents without secondary vacuum bagging.

The success of the NEUTRON demonstrator highlights the effective system integration spearheaded by Airbus Helicopters. The core consortium combined the lead partner’s structural architecture with specialized research from project partners: DLR (process automation and OOO joining), Fraunhofer IGCV (composite processing), Fraunhofer ISC (advanced CMC material formulations) and the University of Stuttgart (acoustic and structural dynamics).

The NEUTRON research project was supported and funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE) under the national LuFo (Luftfahrtforschungsprogramm) framework.

The 170,000-square-foot Hub for Advanced Manufacturing and Research (HAMR) opened in June on Wichita State University's Innovation Campus. Source | Annelise Muret/WSU

Wichita State University’s (WSU, Kan., U.S.) National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) has officially opened its Hub for Advanced Manufacturing and Research (HAMR). The 170,000-square-foot facility is now open for industry and government research, development, training and collaboration.

Located on WSU’s Innovation Campus, HAMR unites applied research, emerging technologies, advanced materials, digital engineering, precision machining and smart automation under one roof — expanding NIAR’s global legacy in innovation and workforce development. There are more than 500 WSU student intern positions at HAMR.

HAMR’s grand opening began June 10 with an invitation-only Industry Day, drawing leaders and experts from across the nation. Representatives from Boeing, Dassault Systèmes, Deloitte, General Atomics, GKN Aerospace, John Deere, Northrop Grumman, Novacoast, Rolls Royce, Siemens, Textron Aviation, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force and more attended the full-day program.

Attendees participated in keynote remarks, guided tours and hands-on demonstrations across six research zones: The Digital Twin; Sustainment & Digital Transformation; Advanced Manufacturing & Materials Research; Process Automation; The Digital Factory; and Customer Engagement: Co Create the Future.

“The opening of HAMR represents a major step forward for WSU, NIAR and the aerospace, defense and manufacturing industries,” says John Tomblin, Wichita State senior vice president for Industry and Defense Programs and NIAR executive director. “This facility was created to accelerate innovation, strengthen U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, and provide industry and government partners with the tools and talent needed to solve the challenges of tomorrow.”

On June 11, Wichita State and NIAR faculty, staff, students and their families joined an open house event exploring the new facility through self-guided tours. Community leaders and invited industry guests also participated, creating a shared celebration of progress, partnership and opportunity.

HAMR was made possible through the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge as part of South Kansas’ “Driving Adoption: Smart Manufacturing Technologies” initiative, with significant co-investment from WSU.

HAMR expands NIAR’s role as a national resource for advanced manufacturing research, digital engineering, sustainment, prototyping and production. Designed to support both commercial and defense customers, the facility provides access to a world-class manufacturing ecosystem and a next-generation workforce.

Learn more about NIAR: “Plant tour: National Institute for Aviation Research, Wichita, Kan., U.S.”

Source | Iten Defense

Global armor technology manufacturer and vehicle integrator NP Aerospace (Coventry U.K.) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Iten Defense (Ashtabula, Ohio), a U.S. based specialist provider of advanced defence protection solutions, from Edgewater Capital Partners and other minority shareholders.

The acquisition will strengthen NP Aerospace’s and Iten’s portfolio of survivability and protection technologies, enhancing its ability to support defense and security customers with mission-critical armour solutions across global markets. NP Aerospace manufactures ballistic helmets, body armor plates, platform armor and vehicle armor using advanced composites, including ceramics and composite materials. Iten’s core products are ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) fiber-reinforced composites used in personal protective equipment, fixed and rotary- wing aircraft, tactical vehicles and maritime vessels.

“This is an important strategic step for NP Aerospace as we continue to invest in advanced protection technologies and expand our capabilities for customers worldwide,” says James Kempston, CEO of NP Aerospace. “Iten Defense brings strong technical expertise, manufacturing capacity and complementary capabilities, and we look forward to working with the team following completion.”

Until closing, NP Aerospace and Iten Defense will continue to operate as independent businesses. Completion of the transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions, including certain government and regulatory approvals. The transaction will close promptly following satisfaction of these conditions. 

Source | Otto Aerospace

Otto Aerospace (Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.) has announced G-1 issue paper finalization, which establishes the company’s flagship Phantom 3500 aircraft’s type certification (TC) basis with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) under 14 CFR Part 23. 

Otto became an FAA applicant for TC in September 2025, strategically electing to use Part 23 to take advantage of the certification efficiencies introduced under Amendment 23-64. Closure of the G-1 reflects that strategy now in execution.

In parallel, Otto is actively engaged with the FAA East Certification Branch to close the G-2 issue paper defining the means of compliance for the Phantom 3500 certification program.

“Now that the certification basis is in place, the program moves into a higher gear on execution,” notes Scott Drennan, president and CEO of Otto Aerospace. “We have alignment with the FAA on what we need to demonstrate, and that gives us real momentum as we move toward first flight and entry into service.”

The milestone also reflects continued FAA engagement with Otto’s transonic laminar flow technology and its Supernatural Vision cabin —innovations that the company claims no manufacturer has previously advanced into certification at Otto’s scale. Otto has moved the program forward through extensive testing and engineering and recently completed preliminary design review.

Otto has already begun advanced material testing for the Phantom 3500 and continues to make strong progress with its top-tier suppliers, reinforcing the program’s momentum toward first flight in 2027 and entry into service in 2030. Flight testing will be conducted from Otto’s new home at Cecil Airport in Jacksonville, Florida.

Also read, “Otto selects F/List GmbH to develop Phantom 3500 interiors .”

Source | Otto Aerospace

Otto Aerospace (Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.) has partnered with F/List GmbH (Thomasberg, Austria) to develop the interior for the Phantom 3500. The clean sheet, ultra-efficient business jet leverages laminar flow aerodynamics and carbon fiber composites to deliver a 61% reduction in fuel burn compared with current super-midsize aircraft.

Under the agreement, F/List, a global provider of high-end interiors for commercial aviation, business and private jets as well as residences, will lead the development and production of the aircraft’s interior furniture and linings, working closely with Otto during the earliest stages of design. The company’s expertise in advanced carbon fiber composite construction and premium cabin creation supports Otto’s goal to develop a lightweight interior that is fully aligned with the aircraft’s performance architecture.

“Because the Phantom is a clean sheet aircraft, the interior isn’t constrained by legacy layouts or systems,” notes Olivier Capistran, principal engineer – interiors, furnishings and equipment at Otto Aerospace. “Working with F/List at this stage allows us to incorporate interior design directly into the aircraft architecture, so the cabin experience reflects the same performance and efficiency the platform is built to deliver.”

Rather than following a traditional supplier model, where vendors are brought in after concepts are finalized and the process shifts into a standard RFI/RFP cycle, Otto and F/List are defining requirements together from the start. This ensures the interior is fully integrated with the aircraft’s structure and systems, giving engineers and designers the opportunity to reduce weight and improve efficiency while delivering a more imaginative, forward-thinking and cohesive cabin experience.

Anita Gradwohl, group director customer relations and sales at F/List says the company is applying its expertise in crafting bio-based materials and integrating bold concepts. 

The Phantom 3500 is currently in development, with first flight targeted for 2027 and entry into service planned for 2030.

Source | Pultron Composites Ltd.

Pultron Composite Ltd.’s  (Gisborne, New Zealand) glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) battens are essential components in IMS New Zealand Ltd.’s (Hawke's Bay, New Zealand) next-gen Cloudburst Fire Buckets (monsoon buckets) used by helicopter-based aerial firefighters.

Safety is a critical factor in the design of these buckets, which are used in the highly stressful and dangerous conditions inherent to aerial wildfire suppression. Pultron says that its specialized battens provide crucial structural support and improve durability for:

Flight safety. The battens maintain the bucket’s shape when empty. This ensures stable flight dynamics and prevents dangerous buffeting from rotor wash that could destabilize the aircraft.

Puncture protection. They protect buckets from damage when dragged through trees during operations, deflecting glancing blows from sticks and branches that would otherwise compromise the bucket’s integrity.

Extreme durability. The battens withstand hard landings and the rigors of being dragged over rocks in riverbeds during refilling operations — conditions that would quickly destroy conventional materials.

Lightweight strength. Pultron’s resin formulation delivers high robustness and fatigue resistance compared to standard resins, providing the strength and stiffness needed without adding excessive weight that would limit payload capacity.

Chemical and corrosion resistance. GFRP is inherently resistant to the chemicals and foam additives used in firefighting operations, as well as salt water and chlorinated water sources commonly used to fill buckets.

IMS, committed to supplying the highest-quality equipment, is always looking for improvements to its offerings. Its choice to go with Pultron’s GFRP composite battens emphasizes this commitment to serve firefighting operations worldwide, wherever forest fires threaten communities and helicopters are deployed for control and suppression.

Source | REGENT Craft

REGENT Craft (North Kingstown, R.I., U.S.) has completed its 255,000-square-foot Seaglider Manufacturing Facility located in North Kingstown, which will serve as the company’s composite Seaglider vessel global production hub and create hundreds of jobs. “We built this facility the way we build our vessels: with precision, purpose and an uncompromising commitment to quality and safety,” says REGENT co-founder and CEO Billy Thalheimer.

The factory will support REGENT’s commercial order book, which exceeds $10 billion across six continents, encompassing orders from leading airline and ferry operators worldwide. It will also support the company’s growing defense business, including $15 million in contracts with the U.S. Marine Corps.

The Seaglider Manufacturing Facility features dedicated areas for structural assembly, wing and hydrofoil integration, battery and systems installation, and water-based test and acceptance operations, with tooling, metrology and quality checkpoints embedded throughout. The facility’s location within Quonset Business Park provides direct waterfront access for sea trials, established logistics infrastructure and proximity to Rhode Island’s skilled maritime and manufacturing workforce. In fact, the site has been formally renamed 1 Seaglider Way, a recognition by local officials of the facility’s significance to the region’s future.

The layout is engineered to support phased capacity increases as production scales. From this site, REGENT will manage end-to-end production of its 12-passenger Viceroy Seaglider vessel and its Squire Seaglider drone, while anchoring a domestic supply chain built for high-rate manufacturing.

Rego-Fix Tool Corp. showcases its toolholding solutions for manufacturers seeking enhanced precision, repeatability and reliability in their machining processes. The company will feature the original ER collet by Rego-Fix, and its PowRgrip toolholding system. The booth also features an Ed Carpenter Racing vehicle on display.

Rego-Fix toolholding systems provide Swiss-precision machining for all manufacturing sectors, including motorsports, aerospace, automotive and medical, through engineered solutions that promote accuracy, rigidity and repeatability in high-pressure environments that demand tight tolerances.

Developed in Tenniken, Switzerland by Rego-Fix, the original ER collet is engineered for precision, versatility and reliability across a wide range of machining applications. Rego-Fix ER collets provide high clamping force and concentricity for extending tool life while maintaining consistent part accuracy. The ER collet is available in multiple sizes and configurations to accommodate a broad clamping range, allowing shops to reduce tooling inventory without sacrificing performance.

The Rego-Fix PowRgrip toolholding system uses a taper-to-taper, press-fit collet holding design that creates a vibration-damping gap to interrupt the strength and severity of vibration waves. Three components make up the PowRgrip: holders, collets and press-fit assembly mounting units. Toolsetting can be accomplished in no more than 10 seconds without heat or hydraulics as used in other tool clamping systems. The PowRgrip technology allows tools to be used immediately after the loading cycle concludes without limitations and tool-life compromises.

As a special booth feature, Rego-Fix has the Ed Carpenter Racing team NTT IndyCar Series vehicle on display for attendees to experience up close and in person. With the use of the company toolholders, Ed Carpenter Racing has maintained precision and critical surface finishes, extended tool life, minimized tool runout and shortened cycle times at 24,000 rpm spindle speeds for its productive part processing.

Source | SABIC

SABIC (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) introduced Ultem SU3102P reactive oligomer, a novel toughening agent for thermoset composites used in primary and secondary aerospace structures such as wings, fuselage frames, spoilers and interior components. The polyetherimide (PEI) oligomer delivers optimal thermoset formulation freedom without impacting processability. Ultem SU3102P oligomer is also a 2026 Edison Awards Gold winner.

“As global air traffic increases significantly with more passengers and cargo, the industry faces pressure to build capacity and throughput within its existing footprint, while still meeting cost, safety and sustainability goals,” says Sergi Monros, vice president of SABIC polymers, specialties BU. “Our Ultem oligomer can help designers create lighter, thinner and tougher composite structures, increase manufacturing efficiency and cut emissions.”

SABIC reports that Ultem SU3102P reactive oligomer is the only thermoplastic solution able to achieve loadings of up to 50% by weight. In contrast, reactive polyethersulfone (rPES) typically permits loadings of only 7-12%. The oligomer also improves toughness-stiffness balance by up to 140% versus rPES, which helps composite materials resist fracture and other damage from impact. 

Despite its high loadings, the Ultem oligomer maintains low formulation viscosity, supporting consistent and efficient processing that helps reduce cycle time. It can enable composites manufacturers to boost the productivity and energy efficiency of thermoset composite prepregs by up to 30%. Importantly, this oligomer can be dropped into existing manufacturing processes and is compatible with a wide range of thermoset resin systems.

Like all of SABIC’s Ultem products, Ultem SU3102P oligomer delivers strength, inherent flame retardance, high heat and chemical resistance, and a low coefficient of thermal expansion. The material is available globally for sampling and in commercial quantities.

Source | Hexagon Composites

Hexagon Composites (Ålesund, Norway) is a pioneer in Type 4 composite pressure vessels, which use carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) filament wound onto a plastic containment liner to provide lightweight storage of compressed natural gas (CNG/methane), hydrogen (H₂), helium and other gases. These vessels and their integrated fuel systems provide lightweight, safe storage and transportation of clean alternative energies used in commercial mobility, bulk gas transportation and industrial applications. Building on 60 years of experience and innovation, Hexagon Composites has launched its largest commercial Type 4 composite cylinder manufactured to date, the Titan 510 Mobile Pipeline. It is reported to offer the highest capacity and operational efficiency for high-volume gas applications in industry, but also for energy, such as data centers.

Meanwhile, the company is re-entering the aerospace market, with its second $5+ million order for high-pressure tanks for space, and sees potential for growth over the next 5 years. CW discusses these latest developments, as well as wet winding versus towpreg, issues in designing new Type 4 and metal liner Type 3 pressure vessels, newly added winding capacity and potential for growth.

History of Mobile Pipeline 

Source | Hexagon Composites, compilation by CW

Although Hexagon Composites was formed in 2000, its history in Type 4 composite pressure vessels goes back much further. In 2003, it acquired Raufoss Fuel Systems (Raufoss, Norway), which delivered its first Type 3 cylinders for CNG vehicles in 1992 (these switched to Type 4 in 2006). Hexagon then acquired what became Lincoln Composites (Lincoln, Neb., U.S.) in 2005. Founded in 1963 and previously part of Brunswick Defense and then General Dynamics, this facility produced filament-wound rocket motor cases and other defense components as well as composite-overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) for aerospace, including Skylab and the Space Shuttle. By 2010, Lincoln Composites had more than 180,000 Type 2, 3 and 4 pressure vessels in service, ranging in volume from 0.065 to 8,500 liters with operating pressures from 35 to 1,725 bar.

“In a lot of ways, that 60-year history and expertise from aerospace still drives our technology,” notes Chet Dawes, senior vice president of global engineering R&D for subsidiary Hexagon Agility (Costa Mesa, Calif., U.S.), the fuel systems supply division of Hexagon Composites (see Hexagon history infographic above). “Lincoln continues to develop our most advanced manufacturing processes, which have informed the newest facilities in Kassel, Germany and Salisbury, North Carolina. It’s also where Hexagon pioneered Mobile Pipeline.” In 2010, Hexagon Composites’ Lincoln campus commercialized the first Titan product — an 11.6-meter-long, 1.1-meter-diameter Type 4 pressure vessel operating at 250 bar with a water volume of 8,400 liters.

Before Titan, Hexagon had developed what are today termed multiple element gas containers (MEGC). “Those were relatively small capacity, such as a 20-foot container with 20 cylinders,” notes Dawes. “As we started to understand the worldwide demand, we pushed to develop the largest cylinder we could make that would fit in a 40-foot container. That led to the original Titan development, which was the largest pressure vessel in the market at that time. However, no codes or standards existed for a pressure vessel of that size, so we had to develop those as well, which resulted in an approval process and special permit by the U.S. DOT and Transport Canada, which then spurred the virtual pipeline industry.” Today, Hexagon has more than 2,250 gas distribution modules in operation worldwide.

Hexagon Mobile Pipeline global deployment and most recent products. Source | Hexagon Composites

Mobile Pipeline has since been through iterations of development, including a reduction in the amount of carbon fiber thanks to more efficient use, says Dawes. “In 2023, we launched our Titan 450 family of 46-inch-diameter cylinders using our latest state-of-the-art technologies for manufacturing at scale that we’ve continuously developed. We then again looked at how far we could go in size, which led to the Titan 510 — currently the largest Type 4 cylinder in production.” Launched in May 2026, the Titan 510 is optimized for 80,000-pound gross vehicle weight limits in the U.S. and Canada, also meeting the more restrictive bridge formulas in California.

Payload, simplicity, thermoplastic composite panels

The market driver for the Titan 510 was to maximize payload and to minimize length for maneuverability, explains Dawes. “The previous Titan 53 module, which used 42-inch-diameter cylinders, was challenging to maneuver due to its 53-foot trailer. That extra length is no problem on the road, but the 45-foot length of the Titan 510 helps when you have to turn and park in crowded industrial settings in order to defuel and decant or refill with gas.”

Hexagon’s Titan 510 Mobile Pipeline modules offer improved maneuverability and use thermoplastic composite (TPC) panels to cut nearly 2,000 pounds of weight for improved payload capacity. Source | Hexagon Composites

New composite cylinder developments were also integrated to help maximize payload while carbon fiber winding advancements improved manufacturability for this larger cylinder. “Plumbing, valves and connections were kept consistent so that customers can interchange modules and have no real difference in fueling/defueling operations,” notes Devin Flemming, lead system design engineer at Hexagon Agility. “We also minimize the number of cylinders in a module for simplicity, which is important for our customers operating fleets of hundreds of trailers.”

“It was very difficult at the beginning to meet all of the requirements,” he continues. “We’re fitting so much more tank into the space, so that adds weight as does the higher gas payload, and you need to distribute that properly across the axles. We looked at how to reduce weight in the steel frame yet still protect cylinders from factors like potential impact and UV radiation. We previously used a metal roof and sides, but for the Titan 510 we chose rigid composite panels. These are thermoplastic sandwich panels with glass fiber-reinforced skins that have an excellent strength-to-weight ratio, are very durable and save about 2,000 pounds.” Hexagon performs the assembly but sources the panels from a U.S. supplier.

In addition to static load testing, Hexagon completed hundreds of miles of dynamic testing on different roads and terrains. “We used more than 30 sensors to understand the full module and chassis system response and correlated that to our customers’ use of the modules,” says Flemming. “That helped us to better optimize other parts of the frame, and we’re continuing to gather data for future iterations of Titan products.”

“During this testing, they broke everything, including the tractor and trailer suspensions,” notes Dawes. “But the modules remained unfazed, showing the robustness we’ve achieved in this engineering and new design.”

Growth via data centers

Certarus is using Hexagon Mobile Pipeline modules to provide power for data centers to start operations, avoiding delays while waiting for pipelines and grid connections. Source | Hexagon Composites, Certarus

Hexagon’s development of the Titan 510 and further future products are part of its response to the growing market for energy to power data centers and industrial sites as the electrical grid struggles to keep up. “We anticipated the demand for high-capacity modules to increase,” says Dawes. Indeed, customers like Certarus Ltd. (Calgary, Canada and Houston, Texas, U.S.) started announcing data center contracts in September 2025. These include 50 megawatts (MW) of power for a hyperscale project until it can connect to a pipeline, support for 135 MW of power generation via 200 CNG transport trailers coming online in 2027 and primary CNG supply for a 60-MW data center in Utah. The gas Certarus and other Hexagon customers deliver powers turbines, microgrids or behind the meter plants, providing the electricity required, and can be deployed in months, not years. Once connections to pipelines or other infrastructure are achieved, a subset of modules can remain to provide a buffer fuel supply and redundancy to eliminate risk of downtime.

“Whether it’s a data center or a major industrial site, both demand high capacity,” Dawes continues, “as well as assurance of reliable energy supply, and that’s what our Mobile Pipeline products enable. We’re continuing to develop new Titan products, including an even shorter length version that’s due out soon, and a next generation [version] that will be even lighter with higher payload.”  

Future Titan products, bespoke composites

Dawes notes that although liner materials and forming methods remain the same across different sizes of Titan cylinders, the composite laminate is bespoke to the specific length and diameter. “The 40-foot and 45-foot modules have a completely different composite laminate design to satisfy the service pressure and other requirements,” he explains. “But it’s also important to maximize the speed of production. For example, the speed of fiber payout, winding and resin impregnation of the fiber are also different depending on the size of tank we’re producing.”

“We have decades of experience learning how to build different size cylinders,” adds Flemming. “For example, there’s a certain amount of air that you need to put in during winding to ensure the liner doesn’t collapse. There are many things that we just understand, and we do different trials with design validation tanks when we’re building these new units.”

“With these larger tanks, we’re solving for issues we haven’t yet experienced on smaller size cylinders,” says Dawes. “And we take those lessons learned and use them to better optimize the speed of manufacturing for our vehicular tanks for CNG buses and trucks. We’ve made all kinds of improvements in production and design from this kind of collective learning across the different applications for our cylinders.”

Manufacturing speed, towpreg, carbon fiber supply

Regarding speed of manufacturing, most new entrants to the Type 4 cylinder market are using towpreg — where the carbon fiber (typically 24K tow) is pre-impregnated with epoxy resin, heated to partial cure and then stored or shipped for winding — versus wet winding where dry fiber is pulled through a resin bath before being applied to the cylinder. These new tank producers claim that winding with towpreg is faster.

“We’ve evaluated towpreg,” says Dawes. “For those new to filament winding, towpreg makes sense because you don’t have to figure out how to do the impregnation — that’s already been done. But when that towpreg is made, the speed with which they impregnate the fiber is still very slow. That process can also damage the fiber during unspooling, impregnating and rewinding back on a spool, with numerous touch points and bends that can break some of the thousands of filaments in the tow.”

“By using wet winding, we handle the fiber once — unspooling, impregnating and winding in one continuous process — which results in less damage. This means less knockdown in fiber properties and more efficient use of the carbon fiber in the cylinder laminate. It also allows us to tailor the speed of manufacturing to optimize the impregnation — which we’ve developed over decades — according to the tank size and requirements. But if you don’t have that experience, then you can start winding very quickly with towpreg. However, it’s also more expensive than buying unimpregnated 24K fiber.”

Regarding carbon fiber supply, Philipp Schramm, CEO of Hexagon Composites, notes that Hexagon is the largest consumer of fiber for pressure vessels, and one of the top three direct buyers of industrial carbon fiber globally. “We maintain relationships with all major carbon fiber suppliers to ensure access to the latest market developments and testing of new products. We source from multiple established suppliers of high-grade carbon fiber. While we do not currently source carbon fiber from China, we are closely monitoring developments there, which we see as a potential future market disrupter.”

Adding capacity for growth in CNG trucks

Hexagon Composites’ expertise in wet filament winding and Type 4 tank production has been developed mainly at its Lincoln, Nebraska, campus which includes three manufacturing plants: One is dedicated for Titan products, another has a wide variety of cylinder size and production capability and the third is a flexible production line featuring the latest in state-of-the-art technology. This, Dawes explains, is what the newest Hexagon Agility production in Kassel, Germany, was modeled after, which also influenced the new Hexagon Purus (Oslo, Norway) facility in Kassel (see CW’s plant tour) and an extension of that has recently been added in the Salisbury, North Carolina plant (see CW’s tour before winding capacity was added).

Type 4 CFRP cylinder production in Hexagon Composites’ Lincoln, Neb. (left) and for Mobile Pipeline in Kassel, Germany (top, bottom right). Source | Hexagon Composites

Automated composite cylinder production at Hexagon Purus in Kassel, Germany. One of two filament winding machines at right and cylinders being unloaded from an oven at left. Source | Hexagon Purus, CW 2025 tour article

As explained in CW’s plant tour of the Kassel facility, this flexible cylinder production line is set up in more of a circular or horseshoe shape to maximize production capability in the minimum footprint. “It also features two adjacent winding machines,” says Dawes, “with the rest of the plant optimized around those and operating as a single line. But it’s also expandable to be two complete production lines and there is space to add two more replicates — so a total of six winding machines could operate in Salisbury. However, that second and third line are not yet configured and could be larger or smaller, depending on what’s needed. So, we have invested in large-scale filament winding that is ready to scale with demand.”

Source | Hexagon Composites, 2024 CW news

CNG/RNG fuel system for a refuse truck being installed at the Hexagon Agility facility in Salisbury, N.C., U.S. Source | Hexagon Composites

This new production will supply Type 4 cylinders for the Salisbury site’s integrated CNG and renewable natural gas (RNG/biogas) fuel systems for heavy- and medium-duty trucks. Although new natural gas vehicle (NGV) registrations declined by 15% in 2025, The State of Sustainable Fleets annual report notes new refuse truck registrations increased by 27% with a growing share powered by RNG/biogas.

Projected recovery in Class 8 trucks (top) along with growth in Mobile Pipeline and aerospace markets, supports Hexagon’s positive outlook for its addressable market to 2030 (bottom). Source | Hexagon Composites

“After years of growth, 2025 saw a cyclical downturn in our core markets,” says Schramm, “that was heightened by tariff volatility, unclear regulatory policy and macroeconomic uncertainty. The result was a 40% drop in our top line year-over-year. But our refuse truck and transit bus segments remained positive, thanks to trends that are continuing forward. Meanwhile, the heavy truck market is recovering.”

It’s also being driven by the Cummins (Columbus, Ind., U.S.) X15N engine, which entered full-scale production in late 2024. Sustainable Fleets 2026 noted that 71% of fleets using the CNG/RNG engine reported cost savings versus diesel and 38% intend to increase its use. Schramm notes that although less than 1% of the 300,000 Class 8 trucks sold annually in the U.S. use CNG, with the X15N, biogas and other trends, that is expected to increase to 8-10% over the next decade.

Hexagon Agility also launched a demonstration program in 2025, which has already resulted in an order for 100 CNG fuel systems for the largest trucking company in Mexico. Test trucks are outfitted with the X15N engine, matching the performance of traditional diesel engines but with up to 50% cheaper fuel costs. Hexagon has pilot programs with leading operators of 250,000-300,000 truck fleets including Walmart, UPS, Ryder and J.B. Hunt.

Growing market, reuse for tanks in space

“And now we’re again working substantially in the commercial aerospace field,” says Dawes, “and that’s also pushing the envelope of composite pressure vessel technology. The COPVs used here are under tremendous static and pressure loads, as well as dynamic and vibration loads during launch. If any one piece of that system doesn’t perform, the results can be disastrous.”

He notes that aerospace operates within a radically different design spectra. “A road trailer gets used for 15-plus years and cycled thousands of times, while space vehicle tanks have a much shorter life, even with reuse. The weight of Titan modules is indeed important, but nowhere near the emphasis it receives in aerospace. Also, we proof test every Titan at 1.5X its service pressure but it’s never operated near that. An aerospace COPV however, is constantly operating at 1.25X its service pressure and expected to rupture at 1.5X that. So, tanks for space are operating much closer to their limit than what is allowed for those in road trailers and vehicles, and they do this because every ounce you add creates a multiple in terms of energy required to launch.”

Falcon 9 flew 165 missions in 2025 with booster turnaround as fast as 13 days. New Glenn recovered its booster in Nov. 2025. Rocket Lab's Neutron and ULA's Vulcan SMART recovery are targeting first flights and partial reuse by 2026–2027. If Starship achieves full reuse, cost could fall below $500/kilogram — unlocking a 10X increase in small satellite deployments. Source | CW with assistance from AI using multiple references¹.
 

But now with reuse, says Dawes, the holy grail in aerospace is to have durability in cycles and life expectancy closer to tanks for vehicular use, but yet retain the super lightweight, high performance needed for launch. “I do think there’s a growing market for COPVs in both commercial and defense aerospace, and they will need to be pressurized for longer periods of time. That will limit, to some extent, the loads they can maintain. If the pressure required is not high, then you’ll want to minimize the amount of carbon fiber used. So, the design problem is still very similar to what we face across all of our composite cylinders.”

“Meanwhile, the need for reliable quality becomes even more important with lower pressure, thin-wall tanks,” he continues. “The higher number of layers you have, the more tolerance you have for transmitting load from one layer to another. But if you only have a few plies, then it’s very important that they’re perfectly laid and have the utmost quality. And the same is true with the input materials like the fiber. Just because a fuel tank for a satellite thruster is lower pressure doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a lower challenge. A super thin-wall tank is fragile, meanwhile you don’t want to add any more weight than you absolutely have to.”

This is where Hexagon’s years and wide range of experience is valuable, says Dawes. “If you don’t have experience in a wide range of real-world applications, then you may not understand how the design drivers change, including resistance to impact, vibration, thermal and mechanical stresses, plus operating in a vacuum environment. Each of these has unique challenges, but the COPV must also function on the Earth’s surface during testing and filling, then survive launch and finally show reliability in orbit with no maintenance.”

Flemming adds that Hexagon’s design team is very adaptable with different types of requirements like this, including beyond the composite performance to gas flow or other operational aspects. “That system level expertise is needed to understand how to budget and control the amount of pressurized gas, whether that’s helium, H₂, methane or others. We have a lot of experience in those areas across many different applications.”

Not done pushing boundaries

Source | Hexagon Composites

“We learned a lot with our early cylinders for aerospace and truck applications, which we then applied to larger-scale Titan products,” says Dawes. “Now, we’re taking our most recent developments with larger size cylinders and applying them in other markets, such as space, where rockets are getting larger and need higher gas capacity and durability while still maintaining high level of performance and reliability that aerospace demands.”

“We are building on the growing momentum across these markets,” adds Schramm, “from the largest Mobile Pipeline cylinder for the Titan 510 modules, to breakthroughs in aerospace. Our focus is squarely on applying our technology and expertise at the scale and speed required to help our customer also push boundaries.”

¹ References:

• SpaceNews — 2025 Orbital Launch Record
• ABI Research — Orbital Launches by Operator 2025–2035
• ABI Research — 43,000 Active Satellites by 2032
• FAA Aerospace Forecast FY2026–2046, Commercial Space
• Aerospace America — Reusable Launch Vehicles 2025
• Payload Space — 2025 Orbital Launches by Country

The gentle, controlled and consistent nature of mass finishing helps ensure uniform treatment of all surfaces.(Photo credits: Rösler)

In the aerospace and medical industries, mass finishing and shot blasting processes are critical for achieving a quality surface finish while ensuring the reliability and safety of critical components. These two distinct technologies used for surface finishing of components each have a unique method and application.

Mass finishing, which includes techniques such as tumbling, vibratory finishing and centrifugal finishing, involves placing parts in a machine with abrasive media, where they are finished through a combination of mechanical and chemical actions. This method is particularly effective for deburring, smoothing, polishing and cleaning a large number of small- to medium-sized parts simultaneously, making it well suited for intricate components with complex geometries. The gentle, controlled and consistent nature of mass finishing helps ensure uniform treatment of all surfaces.

Conversely, shot blasting uses the forceful projection of abrasive materials, such as steel or glass beads, against the surface of the component. This high-energy process is often used for cleaning, strengthening (peening) or roughening surfaces, often for larger, more robust components. Its aggressive nature makes it appropriate for removing heavy scale, rust or old coatings, and it is commonly used in industries such as aerospace and automotive for preparing surfaces for painting or coating.

The choice between mass finishing and shot blasting depends on the specific requirements of the application. Mass finishing is preferred for delicate, precision parts requiring uniform treatment, while shot blasting is chosen for its aggressiveness and suitability for larger, tougher components needing thorough surface preparation.

Mass finishing is widely used to smooth and polish implantable devices, surgical instruments and other medical tools.

In the medical industry, mass finishing, prior to final sterilization in accordance with applicable medical regulations, is essential for ensuring the safety and effectiveness of various devices. The process is widely used to smooth and polish implantable devices, surgical instruments and other medical tools. The primary objective is to eliminate any surface irregularities that could harbor bacteria or cause patient discomfort. For instance, mass finishing is vital in the production of orthopedic implants, where a smooth surface can significantly reduce the risk of tissue irritation and promote better integration with the body. Additionally, the process is used to clean and finish components of diagnostic equipment, ensuring that they are free of contaminants and safe for patient contact.

Shot blasting, in the context of the aerospace industry, is crucial for preparing component surfaces for further processing and ensuring their structural integrity. This process is extensively used for cleaning, texturizing or peening surfaces of aircraft components made of metals and alloys. By removing surface contaminants, shot blasting enhances the adhesion properties of subsequent coatings, which is critical for parts that are exposed to extreme environmental conditions. Moreover, shot blasting is used for stress-relieving and strengthening components through peening, a process that improves fatigue resistance and prolongs the lifespan of critical aerospace parts, such as turbine blades, landing gear and fuselage components.

Shot blasting, in the context of the aerospace industry, is crucial for preparing component surfaces for further processing and ensuring their structural integrity.

The importance of mass finishing and shot blasting in these sectors is underscored by their direct impact on safety and performance of safety-critical devices. In the medical field, the precise and gentle finishing of devices ensures device efficacy. In aerospace, the reliability and durability of components are non-negotiable, with shot blasting playing a pivotal role in ensuring these attributes. These processes not only contribute to the longevity and functionality of components, but are also integral in complying with stringent industry standards and regulations, thereby upholding the highest safety benchmarks in these critical sectors.

Rösler AG offers solutions for mass finishing and shot blasting in the aforementioned industries and others. It offers a variety of mass finishing machines, such as tumblers, vibratory finishers and centrifugal equipment, as well as an array of shot blasting machines suited for applications ranging from gentle peening to aggressive surface cleaning. Equally important is the company’s experience in selecting the proper media to achieve optimal results, whether it be ceramic, plastic or metallic for mass finishing, or the appropriate abrasives for shot blasting, to achieve optimal results.

Rösler also focuses on offering automated and turnkey finishing solutions per a manufacturer’s specific needs. These can include everything from initial consultation and machine design to installation and commissioning.

About the author: Colin Spellacy is head of sales for Rösler UK.

Quaser’s manufacturing facility reflects the growing focus among Taiwanese builders on multitasking platforms and machining solutions for aerospace and other high-complexity applications. Photos provided by Eduardo Tovar. 

Taichung: The Industrial Ecosystem Behind TMTS

The 2026 edition of the Taiwan International Machine Tool Show (TMTS) marked the show’s return to Taichung, widely regarded as the historic center of Taiwan’s machine tool industry and home to a large share of the sector’s manufacturing capacity. Beyond the exhibition halls, the location reinforced one of the central concepts promoted this year by the Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders’ Association (TMBA): the connection between exhibition, manufacturing and the broader industrial ecosystem.

During the show, TMBA emphasized that nearly 90% of Taiwan’s machine tool ecosystem is concentrated in the Taichung region, within an industrial corridor of roughly 60 kilometers that includes more than 1,500 companies involved in machining, automation, components, controls, spindles, tooling and manufacturing technologies. This industrial concentration has historically been one of Taiwan’s key competitive advantages, particularly because of the responsiveness and proximity among builders, suppliers and subcontractors.

Aerospace and energy applications — both strongly represented at TMTS 2026 — continue driving the development of machines and processes capable of machining highly complex, precision components.

Unlike many international exhibitions where activity is concentrated mainly on the show floor, TMTS continues to promote its “Front-Showroom, Back-Factory” concept, which enables visitors to combine the exhibition experience with tours of nearby manufacturing plants and production facilities. The goal is to showcase not only finished machines, but also the engineering and production capabilities behind Taiwan’s machine tool industry. This direct connection between exhibition and manufacturing was one of the most visible aspects of TMTS 2026.

During several presentations throughout the show, TMBA executives emphasized that Taiwan’s machine tool industry is going through a period of strategic transformation. Patrick Chen, president of TMBA, explained that the industry’s objective is no longer simply to compete as a machine supplier, but to evolve toward a model based on integrated solutions, application-specific technologies and higher value-added services.

That shift was visible both in the institutional messaging and in the configuration of several booths. Companies such as Tongtai and YCM developed joint, ecosystem-oriented exhibits integrating automation, software, digital monitoring, inspection and autonomous material handling. Rather than displaying isolated machines, these exhibits presented complete manufacturing workflows aimed at industries such as aerospace, automotive, semiconductors, moldmaking and energy.

Collaboration among manufacturers also reflected a response to new global market pressures. During conferences and press events, industry executives acknowledged that the technological growth of Chinese machine tool builders, combined with geopolitical factors and changes in global manufacturing costs, is forcing Taiwan to rethink its export strategy. In response, collaboration among companies, application specialization and the development of complete manufacturing solutions emerged as key priorities for the Taiwanese machine tool industry.

Vision Wide showcased gantry machining centers developed for large-format applications where structural rigidity and advanced-material machining are critical requirements.

Technical visits conducted during the exhibition reinforced that perception. At Quaser, for example, discussions focused less on individual machines and more on the company’s ability to develop OEM solutions, multitasking platforms and customized projects for international customers, including aerospace manufacturers. The company described its approach as “turning concepts into real manufacturing,” an idea that reflects the broader cultural transition taking place across much of Taiwan’s manufacturing sector.

This approach was also evident within groups such as SPEMA, where several manufacturers shared exhibition space under a joint-solution strategy. Rather than competing solely on price or individual machine specifications, many companies positioned themselves as part of broader manufacturing platforms integrating EDM, precision grinding and CNC machining technologies for semiconductor and high-precision manufacturing applications.

Beyond product launches, TMTS 2026 revealed an industry seeking to redefine its global positioning. The combination of industrial proximity, rapid development capability, technological expertise and application specialization continues to be one of the key strengths of Taichung’s manufacturing ecosystem, particularly as Taiwanese builders seek to differentiate themselves through more complex applications and specialized technological developments.

Large-format machining solutions displayed by Taiwanese builders reflected the industry’s increasing focus on aerospace, moldmaking and energy applications requiring higher levels of rigidity and precision.

AI, Digitalization and Predictive Monitoring Take Center Stage

Artificial intelligence was one of the most visible themes at TMTS 2026, although in most cases its application focused less on futuristic concepts and more on solving practical manufacturing challenges related to programming, monitoring, maintenance and operational efficiency.

Across multiple booths, discussions centered on how to integrate digital tools into existing manufacturing environments, particularly as labor shortages and the need to reduce downtime continue pushing manufacturers to automate decision-making and simplify operations.

One of the clearest examples was the joint exhibit developed by Tongtai and YCM, which featured a smart manufacturing platform integrating real-time monitoring, automation, data analytics and digital simulation. The system included automated manufacturing cells combining machining centers, optical inspection, digital simulation and autonomous part transport, along with AI-based tools capable of analyzing machining programs before execution to identify potential errors or process conflicts that could affect production.

Accutex demonstrated wire EDM technologies for precision applications integrating automation, digital controls and energy-efficiency strategies.

The demonstration also included AI-assisted automated optical inspection (AOI) systems for part inspection, as well as predictive maintenance tools designed to monitor critical machine components before failures occur. According to company representatives, the goal is to reduce downtime and anticipate service requirements through continuous operational data analysis.

One of the most notable developments was the integration of Tongtai Line Management with NVIDIA Omniverse to create digital twin models capable of replicating the real-time behavior of automated production lines. The demonstration included simulations synchronized with physical machines and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), allowing manufacturers to visualize production flow, loading capacity and projected daily or monthly productivity before implementing changes on the shop floor.

These technologies were also closely tied to the continued growth of industries such as semiconductors, where precision and traceability requirements continue to increase. In one of Tongtai’s demonstration cells, an automated system integrated ultrasonic machining, optical inspection and autonomous transport to manufacture high-precision microhole components for advanced electronic applications.

Hiwin highlighted linear motion systems and torque rotary tables designed for automation, multiaxis precision and advanced smart manufacturing applications.

Another recurring theme involved the use of artificial intelligence to preserve and reuse accumulated engineering knowledge within manufacturing organizations. During one technical presentation, Tongtai representatives explained how the company is developing integrated databases using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) frameworks to centralize engineering expertise, machining parameters and service knowledge for AI-assisted support systems.

Beyond software platforms, several manufacturers demonstrated how these digital capabilities are increasingly being integrated directly into machine tools. Hiwin, for example, highlighted monitoring systems for ball screws and motion-control components capable of supporting predictive maintenance and continuous machine-condition monitoring. Meanwhile, machine tool builders are beginning to incorporate thermal sensors, tool wear monitoring and process stability analysis as standard features within their equipment platforms.

Although many of these technologies are still evolving, TMTS 2026 made it clear that Taiwan’s machine tool industry is accelerating the convergence of machining, automation and data analytics. In many cases, the focus is no longer solely on building faster or more rigid machines, but on developing manufacturing platforms capable of collecting data, anticipating process deviations, reducing downtime and optimizing production performance in real time.

Patrick Chen, president of TMBA, emphasized during TMTS 2026 that Taiwan’s machine tool industry is evolving from individual machine manufacturing toward integrated, higher value-added solutions.

Aerospace and Semiconductor Applications Drive New Machine Architectures

Aerospace and semiconductor manufacturing had a strong presence throughout TMTS 2026 and emerged as two of the primary technological drivers behind the development of new machine architectures, multitasking platforms and high-precision manufacturing systems.

Both industries face similar challenges: complex geometries, difficult-to-machine materials, increasingly tight tolerances and growing pressure to integrate multiple operations within a single platform. As a result, several Taiwanese builders are directing a significant portion of their development efforts toward machines specifically designed for these applications.

One of the most visible examples was APEC, a company focused on five-axis machining centers and gantry-style machine architectures for aerospace applications. During interviews conducted at TMTS, company representatives explained that current development efforts are centered on machining titanium components, carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) structures and large-scale parts for aircraft engines and airframe assemblies. The company highlighted solutions designed for complex workpieces requiring high thermal stability, multiaxis precision and vibration control during extended roughing and finishing operations.

TMTS 2026, held at the Taichung International Convention and Exhibition Center (TICEC), reinforced the connection between the exhibition and Taichung’s manufacturing ecosystem.

Automation is also becoming increasingly important within this segment. APEC demonstrated integrated systems for handling large structural components using gantry-based automation platforms designed for aerospace applications where workpieces can easily exceed 10 meters in length.

Another technology that attracted significant attention during the exhibition was the integration of hybrid processes within multitasking machines. During a technical visit to Quaser, the company presented developments aimed at combining multiple operations within a single machining platform to reduce setup changes and improve process stability.

Among the machines highlighted was the Quaser UX500 MT, a multitasking machining center designed to combine milling and turning operations within a five-axis configuration. Company representatives explained that this type of platform addresses the growing demand for machining complex components in a single setup, particularly in industries where geometric precision and concentricity are critical.

The trend toward hybrid platforms also appeared in precision grinding and finishing applications. Within the SPEMA pavilion, companies presented technologies such as the Chevalier FSG-818ADIV surface grinder, developed for precision applications requiring surface finishes near 0.04 Ra and accuracy levels approaching two microns. Although many of these applications are linked to semiconductor manufacturing, their requirements for stability and precision closely resemble those found in advanced aerospace manufacturing.

Semiconductors, in fact, emerged as one of the most dynamic sectors represented at the exhibition. Several companies showcased machines and manufacturing cells specifically developed for microdrilling, ultrasonic machining and ultra-high-precision operations targeting advanced electronic components.

Tongtai integrated automation, digital monitoring and data analytics within its smart manufacturing demonstrations, one of the most visible technology themes at TMTS 2026.

One of the most specialized examples was the Winbro HSD3 system presented by the Quaser group for aerospace and advanced electronics applications. The machine is designed to perform laser microdrilling operations on complex components such as aerospace turbine parts. During the demonstration, company representatives explained that the system can produce non-conventional hole geometries — including triangular cooling holes for turbine thermal management — a capability particularly relevant for high-temperature aerospace components.

The same technology is also being applied in semiconductor manufacturing, where the system is capable of producing high-precision microholes in specialized substrates. According to the company, some applications require up to 20,000 holes in a single component, illustrating the level of precision and repeatability currently demanded by the electronics industry.

Another notable trend at the exhibition was the growing integration of ultrasonic technologies within precision machining processes. Tongtai presented semiconductor-oriented solutions integrating ultrasonic machining, automation and optical inspection within a single manufacturing cell. These configurations are designed to reduce process variation and improve stability when machining complex and highly fragile components.

Beyond individual machines, TMTS 2026 demonstrated how aerospace and semiconductor manufacturing are accelerating the transition toward more integrated equipment platforms, hybrid architectures and highly automated manufacturing processes. In both industries, the pressure to improve precision, productivity and traceability is driving machine builders to develop solutions capable of combining multiple technologies within increasingly sophisticated machine architectures.

The Winbro system presented by Quaser demonstrated high-precision microdrilling applications for aerospace and advanced electronic components.

Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Manufacturing Gain Importance in Technology Development

At TMTS 2026, sustainability was no longer presented as a concept separate from productivity. Instead, it increasingly appeared as an integrated part of the technology strategies pursued by many Taiwanese machine tool builders. Throughout technical presentations, factory tours and conference sessions, energy reduction, resource optimization and environmental monitoring were consistently linked to operational efficiency and manufacturing competitiveness.

The topic aligned directly with the exhibition’s central theme — “AI-Powered Sustainable Manufacturing” — and reflected the growing pressure machine tool manufacturers face in responding to evolving market and regulatory demands related to carbon footprint reduction, energy efficiency and energy-consumption monitoring.

Several manufacturers explained that customers in industries such as aerospace, semiconductors and automotive are beginning to require detailed information regarding energy usage, emissions and environmental performance as part of supplier qualification processes. As a result, some Taiwanese builders are starting to incorporate energy-monitoring tools and efficiency analytics directly into their digital manufacturing platforms.

In the case of Tongtai and YCM, part of the integrated systems presented at TMTS included tools designed to evaluate productivity and operational performance through continuous machine-data collection. Although many of these technologies are primarily associated with predictive maintenance and process monitoring, they also enable manufacturers to evaluate machine utilization, downtime and energy consumption within automated production lines.

The integration of digital twin technology through NVIDIA Omniverse was also presented as a tool for reducing waste and optimizing processes before actual production begins. According to Tongtai representatives, these simulations make it possible to anticipate programming issues, inefficient tool paths or production bottlenecks, reducing commissioning time while minimizing material and energy waste.

The search for greater efficiency was also evident in the mechanical design of several machines displayed at the exhibition. Builders of large-format machining centers highlighted improvements related to thermal stability, vibration reduction and motion optimization, aimed not only at improving machining accuracy but also at reducing wear and energy consumption during extended machining cycles.

In aerospace applications, where machining cycles are often long and material removal rates are high, thermal stability has become increasingly important for minimizing rework and maintaining dimensional consistency. Companies such as Kao Ming and APEC presented solutions designed to maintain structural rigidity and thermal stability during high-torque operations and long machining cycles, particularly when machining titanium and other difficult-to-machine alloys.

Another recurring theme involved reducing fluids and consumables in composite-material machining applications. Manufacturers such as Vision Wide highlighted dry-machining capabilities for CFRP and glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) components, eliminating coolant usage and simplifying part of the environmental management associated with the process.

Sustainability was also closely linked to automation and the reduction of waste associated with manual intervention. Several automated manufacturing cells presented at TMTS were designed to reduce operator error, improve repeatability and optimize tool and material usage through continuous monitoring and integrated in-process inspection.

Beyond individual technologies, the exhibition demonstrated how sustainable manufacturing is becoming increasingly embedded within the broader strategic vision of Taiwan’s machine tool industry. In many cases, the focus is beginning to shift toward manufacturing systems capable of combining precision, energy efficiency, process stability and digital traceability within a single production environment.

Global Pressure Accelerates Taiwan’s Strategic Transformation

Beyond the technologies displayed at TMTS 2026, one of the most consistent messages throughout the exhibition was the need for Taiwan’s machine tool industry to rethink its global positioning amid an increasingly competitive and rapidly changing manufacturing environment.

During meetings with manufacturers, executives and TMBA representatives, one concern surfaced repeatedly: competing primarily on price is no longer a sustainable strategy for many Taiwanese builders. The technological advancement of Chinese manufacturers, pressure on margins and ongoing geopolitical tensions are pushing Taiwan’s machine tool industry to accelerate its transition toward higher value-added business models based on technological integration and application specialization.

During the joint presentation by Tongtai and YCM, representatives from both companies openly acknowledged that Taiwan faces significant challenges related to international competition, fragmented industrial capabilities and the need to improve responsiveness to global market shifts. As a result, several manufacturers are beginning to promote broader industrial collaboration models that integrate machine builders, automation suppliers, software developers and component manufacturers within shared technology platforms.

The creation of collaborative industrial ecosystems became one of the most visible concepts at TMTS 2026. Rather than focusing solely on the individual performance of each manufacturer, several exhibits emphasized the industry’s ability to develop integrated technological solutions through cooperation among multiple Taiwanese companies.

This approach also reflects one of the structural characteristics of Taiwan’s manufacturing sector: the high concentration of small and medium-sized specialized companies within the Taichung industrial ecosystem. Although this model has historically been one of Taiwan’s strengths because of its flexibility and rapid development capability, some manufacturers recognize that fragmentation can also limit scalability when competing against larger global players.

Within this context, collaboration is increasingly viewed not only as a commercial advantage but also as a strategic necessity. For many companies, the objective is no longer simply to sell individual machine tools, but to provide complete manufacturing platforms integrating automation, monitoring, software, inspection and technical support within a unified solution.

Another visible shift involved the growing focus on industry-specific applications. While many Taiwanese manufacturers historically maintained relatively broad product portfolios, TMTS 2026 featured exhibits clearly targeted toward industries such as aerospace, semiconductors, energy, moldmaking and medical manufacturing.

This specialization reflects both the need for differentiation and the search for applications with higher technological barriers and stronger margins. Aerospace and semiconductor manufacturing in particular are driving demand for machines with greater levels of precision, digital integration and automation, forcing manufacturers to expand their engineering and technical support capabilities. Technologies such as Quaser’s multitasking machining centers, Tongtai’s automation platforms and Winbro’s laser microdrilling systems reflected this transition toward more complex and highly specialized manufacturing solutions.

International expansion also remains a critical component of Taiwan’s machine tool strategy. Several companies highlighted continued growth in markets such as the United States, Europe, India and Southeast Asia as they seek to diversify their global presence amid shifting supply chains and international trade tensions.

In aerospace manufacturing, for example, companies such as Quaser and Winbro highlighted projects involving suppliers connected to Boeing, Rolls-Royce and GE Aerospace. Meanwhile, other manufacturers pointed to semiconductors and energy as sectors generating new opportunities for high-precision technologies developed in Taiwan.

TMTS 2026 ultimately reflected an industry undergoing a broader strategic transformation. Although mechanical precision and manufacturing capability remain fundamental strengths, the industry’s focus is increasingly shifting toward integration, application specialization, automation and digital intelligence. In a more competitive global environment, many Taiwanese machine tool builders appear to be moving away from volume-driven strategies and toward the development of more sophisticated, high-value manufacturing technologies.

Source | Toray Advanced Composites

Toray Advanced Composites (Morgan Hill, Calif., U.S.) announces expanded NCAMP qualifications for its high-performance Toray Cetex TC1225 LM-PAEK thermoplastic composite (TPC) material system, further broadening approved material formats and processing methodologies.

Toray Cetex LM-PAEK NCAMP databases now include TC1225/Torayca T700 unidirectional (UD) tape prepreg, reported to be the first TPC material system NCAMP has qualified in both woven and UD material formats. This development builds on Toray’s qualification of the TC1225/Torayca T300 fabric qualification announced at the end of 2025.

This most recent material qualification was completed using automated fiber placement (AFP) via Electroimpact (Mukilteo, Wash., U.S.) and Coriolis Composites (Quéven, France) systems, followed by a vacuum bag oven (VBO) out-of-autoclave (OOA) post-consolidation process. The database was augmented with five supplemental process equivalencies to cover the broadest scope of processing methodologies for a TPC material. These include static press, autoclave, OOA/VBO, automated tape laying (ATL), shuttle press and continuous compression molding (CCM). This expanded qualification and equivalency framework supports the acceleration of TPC and their integration into primary and secondary aircraft structures.

Toray Cetex TOC materials can also be configured and supplied with integrated functionalities — such as lightning strike protection and galvanic corrosion protection — delivering additional processing efficiencies and functional benefits for aerospace applications.

Toray Cetex TC1225/Toracya T700 UD tape prepreg has an engineered resin rich configuration ideal for automated processes such as ATL/AFP tape layup/automated ATL/AFP. Its highly uniform, low-void impregnation enables consistent, optimized mechanical properties while supporting significantly improved manufacturing rates.

An additional NCAMP material qualification of Toray Cetex TC1225 UD tape, reinforced with Torayca T1100, is currently in progress and is expected to be completed by September 2026.

A sandwich panel made with 3960-FC. Source | Toray Composite Materials America

Toray Composite Materials America Inc. (Toray CMA, Tacoma, Wash., U.S.) presents 3960-FC, a fast-cure variant of the company’s high-performance, highly toughened 3960 prepreg system. Engineered for mission-critical aerospace and defense applications, this fast-cure system reduces cure time by up to 45% while maintaining the 3960 system’s proven mechanical performance.

The fast-cure prepreg was developed to help OEMs and their supply chains meet increasing build rate requirements across next-gen single-aisle commercial aircraft programs, advanced air mobility (AAM) platforms and new mission-critical, mass-produced defense systems. “Increased pressure is being placed on material suppliers to provide a structural material solution with production rates now higher than what manufacturers have historically supported, [so] 3960-FC accelerates manufacturing cycles while maintaining the mechanical and structural performance customers expect from our premier product,” says Jeff Cross, principal director of defense programs.

The 3960 prepreg system demonstrates equivalence with the material data in the 3960 NCAMP database. It delivers optimal toughness, hot/wet performance, tensile strength, stiffness and damage tolerance. The material is also highly compatible with a broad range of automated manufacturing technologies, including automated fiber placement (AFP), automated tape laying (ATL) and traditional processing methods.

Additionally, the fast-cure variant enhances prototype capabilities by enabling the use of lower-temperature tooling, which reduces tooling costs, while expanding vacuum-bag-only (VBO) processing windows. The material is capable of compression molding consolidation, helping customers further reduce takt times and lower manufacturing costs. Unlike many accelerated epoxy systems, 3960-FC exhibits a low exotherm risk for thick structures

Target applications for 3960-FC include primary aircraft structures, mid- to large-size UAVs, launch vehicles and rockets, and rotorcraft structures.

Greene Tweed (Kulpsville, Pa., U.S.) engineered thermoplastic composite (TPC) engine guide vanes using its Xycomp DLF material (chopped carbon fiber-reinforced PEEK, PEKK or PEI), co-molded with a 3D printed metal leading edge.

This innovation eliminates the need for metallic coatings, withstands hail impacts at 165 meters/second, and employs a rapid ColdFusion compression molding process with cycles under 20 minutes, enabling high-volume production (10,000 parts/year). The design saves 4 kilograms per engine, improves fuel efficiency and has led to a 10-year agreement with a major manufacturer for over 50 TPC parts, with test shipsets planned for 2026.

Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI, Sacheon, South Korea), with expertise scaling up large composite primary aerostructures, is preparing for the possible use of thermoplastic composite (TPC) structures in future aircraft.

KAI developed large-scale TPC demonstrators, such as a 3- × 2-meter fuselage section and a wing skin section plus torsion box, using processes including automated fiber placement (AFP), oven consolidation and welding. These achieved low porosity (<1%), high fiber volume fractions (58-60%) and recyclability, enabling faster production cycles compared to traditional autoclave methods.

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft reached its target speed and altitude for future community overflights for the first time during a flight on Friday, June 12, 2026. Source | NASA/Lori Losey

The NASA (Washington, D.C., U.S.) X-59 experimental aircraft reached an anticipated milestone on June 12: Mach 1.4 (about 924 mile-per-hour) flight and an altitude of 55,000 feet, the conditions required for the aircraft to make future flights critical to its mission.  

The X-59 still has months of performance testing ahead, but after those are complete, NASA’s QueSST mission will fly the aircraft over several U.S. communities to collect data on public perception of the quiet sonic thump it will make at supersonic speeds. Those community overflights will include flights at Mach 1.4 and 55,000 feet. 

So far, the aircraft’s team has steadily expanded the X-59’s flight envelope, evaluating its performance at a variety of speeds and altitudes and having its pilots take on a battery of manuevers. 

The X-59 was designed to fly supersonic without causing a loud sonic boom. However, for these early supersonic flights it has been accompanied by a NASA F-15 research aircraft, a traditional supersonic jet that causes booms obscuring any noise the X-59 makes. During upcoming flights, a shock-sensing probe mounted to the F-15 will gather measurements of the X-59’s shock wave signature, an early measure of its supersonic performance. 

After the team conducts more tests to complete envelope expansion, the X-59 will enter the acoustic validation phase where researchers will thoroughly measure the aircraft’s supersonic acoustic signature to confirm it is performing as intended. 

CW has covered the X-59 experimental aircraft extensively. Learn more here.

Figure 1. Industrial LEA-based inspection system in production use for automated helicopter tailboom inspection. Inset: the laser-based ultrasound generation unit of the through-transmission inspection head. Source (All Images) | Xarion Laser Acoustics

Every aircraft that flies depends on parts that look perfect from the outside but may hide delaminations, disbonds or porosity within. Finding those defects is the job of nondestructive testing (NDT), and for decades it has meant slow, manual ultrasonic inspection. Xarion’s (Vienna, Austria) laser excited acoustics (LEA) technology is changing this by making automated ultrasonic inspection more practical across aerospace, automotive, defense and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO).

Xarion’s LEA is a dry, contact-free ultrasonic testing method that combines a pulsed laser for ultrasound generation with the company’s optical microphone for detection. In contrast to conventional ultrasonic testing, no probe must be pressed against the part, and no water or gel is required to transmit the ultrasound.

Because LEA operates without physical contact and without water coupling, it removes two of the main practical challenges associated with automating ultrasonic inspection. “For a manufacturer, that means a cheaper integration and lower operating costs, and the freedom to inspect parts that were previously very difficult to handle,” says Dr. Balthasar Fischer, founder and CEO of Xarion Laser Acoustics. 

CW goes into even more detail in “Laser-excited acoustics provide contact-free, nondestructive composites inspection.”

Proven in aerospace production

Figure 2. This compact, fiber-coupled inspection head enables automated, single-sided testing in confined and hard-to-reach areas (hand shown for size reference). It creates ultrasound images of internal material defects (e.g., in aircraft wings) completely contact-free, without requiring coupling gel, using an eye-safe laser.

The LEA technology is industrially used to inspect helicopter tailbooms for a major European aerospace OEM (Fig. 1). These large carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) structures combine complex geometries with a mix of monolithic and honeycomb sections within the same component. The decisive factor in this application is accessibility: A key inspection challenge is reaching the internal regions of the tailboom. The compact, fiber-coupled LEA probe (Fig. 2) can be mounted on a robotic lance and inserted into the structure, enabling automated inspection of areas deep inside the component, where the narrow internal space leaves little room. The contactless operation of LEA enables reliable, automated inspection of these demanding aerospace structures.

Xarion’s technology is already used in a wide range of additional industrial inspection applications across aerospace, automotive and other industries. LEA is suited to the inspection of composite materials, including CFRP and GFRP, and metallic components. It is equally applicable to complex structural configurations such as bonded assemblies and sandwich structures. This broad applicability allows manufacturers to address a diverse set of inspection tasks using a single technology platform.

The advantages of LEA are not limited to compact probe dimensions and improved accessibility. In many applications, the absence of water coupling is equally important. One example is the inspection of open aluminum honeycomb structures used as abrasive seals in jet engines. In such components, water-coupled inspection reaches its limits, because the water jet is scattered at the exposed honeycomb edges, preventing the acquisition of readable ultrasonic data. Since LEA operates without water coupling, it avoids this limitation and enables the inspection of structures that are difficult to assess with conventional ultrasound methods.

Another challenge faced by many customers is the need to inspect a wide variety of components within the same production environment. Different structures, materials and geometries often require specific inspection setups or approaches.

“We work with customers who need to inspect many different honeycomb and monolithic structures, sometimes on the same day,” says Fischer. “The fact that our technology handles a wide range of materials without any change in setup is not something they take for granted. It used to require completely different inspection approaches for each part.”

Automation beyond the production line

Conventional automated inspection systems are efficient at high volumes and stable geometries, but they are difficult to justify for small batches and frequently changing component types. Add a requirement for mobility, where the system must come to the part rather than the other way around, and most automated solutions are ruled out entirely. This is the automation gap: A large share of aerospace and defense inspection work falls precisely into this category and has therefore remained manual.

Xarion’s LEAbot is designed to close this gap. Mounted on a collaborative robot (cobot), the LEA sensor forms a compact and flexible inspection cell that is easy to operate. It can be moved directly to the component, whether a fuselage skin panel, a wing leading edge or a control surface assembly, and is ready to scan within minutes. There is no couplant, no surface preparation and no fixed infrastructure required, and the cell can be redeployed between part types within minutes.

“We see a lot of potential here,” says Dr. Josef Pörnbacher, CTO of Xarion Laser Acoustics. “Small series, changing part types and the need to bring the inspection to the component are exactly the conditions where conventional automation does not pay off.”

This makes LEAbot well suited to small-scale production and to MRO across aerospace and defense. In MRO in particular, aircraft must be inspected at regular intervals throughout their service life, often across mixed fleets and repaired sections with modified geometries, conditions that match the strengths of a flexible, mobile system. By automating the scanning and analysis process, LEAbot also reduces the manual effort involved — qualified personnel no longer inspect component after component by hand, but instead manage the system, review flagged indications and make the final determination. Inspection reports, scan data and defect localizations are generated automatically and reproducibly, which matters wherever inspections must be traceable.

Pulse-echo LEA

LEA can be operated in several inspection modes, which makes it versatile across a wide range of applications and industries. Through-transmission requires access to both sides of a part at the same time. Pitch-catch works from a single side and is well suited for checking the bond between honeycomb cores and their skins, though it provides no depth information. Pulse-echo also operates from a single side, and it is the mode that makes the decisive difference — it tells the engineer exactly how deep they sit. In aerospace and defense, this single-sided capability matters most, because installed structures such as wing skins, fuselage panels, assembled modules and welded parts can only be reached from the outer surface.

Figure 3. LEAstudio software is designed for a 3D world. A 3D C-scan image (curved monolithic specimen) enables straightforward identification of defects on components of any shape.

The depth information from pulse-echo is what makes it so valuable in practice, Xarion says. In carbon fiber structures it directly determines the repair decision: A surface-adjacent delamination may be addressed by local patching, while a defect at a structural ply may require a more significant intervention or part replacement. “With pulse-echo, we get the full depth profile of the part from a single scan pass,” explains Pörnbacher. “We can tell you not just that there is a delamination, but exactly which layer it is in. That is the information the engineer needs to make a repair decision, and it is something one-sided, air-coupled systems simply have not been able to deliver before. They struggle here because the signal returning through air is extremely weak and overshadowed by transducer ringdown effects, but our optical microphone is sensitive enough to detect it reliably.”

The pulse-echo probe on a LEAbot captures the full structure, and Xarion’s own LEAstudio software turns the data into clear visual results (Fig. 3). Disbonds and delaminations become visible at a glance, including exactly where and how deep they are within the materials.

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