The Quickstep Process and the Quickstep Melding Process offer many benefits over traditional aerospace manufacturing processes such as autoclave, RTM and matched metal presses. The key benefits are as follows:
- Out of Autoclave Processing
- Liquid Heat Transfer
- Improved Productivity in Operations
- Flexible Processing
- Improved Cored Structures
- Lower Costs, Higher Volumes
Out of Autoclave Processing
- 75 - 90% lower energy consumption for heating/cooling
- Compressed air or nitrogen use per cycle eliminated
- Only 1 to 4 psi operating pressures
- Removes component size limitations fixed by autoclave volumes
- Dramatically lower capital costs
Liquid Heat Transfer = Faster Cycle Times
- Experience to date shows reductions of 50 to 90% over autoclave and oven cure cycle times using commercial prepregs
- Very accurate part temperature control
- More repeatability in cure cycles, even heat up and cool down
- Rapid heating aids full resin flow through and between laminate layers for improved inter-laminar properties and improved surface quality
- Limited exotherm even in 1 inch thick laminates
Improved Productivity in Operations
- No waiting on other parts to begin cure in large batch autoclaves
- Suited to integration into “Lean Cells"
- Full traceability of parts to cure cycles
- Lower development costs due to faster iteration of experiments
- Enable large scale manufacturing volumes using fast cycle, multiple tool processing
- Lower tooling costs
- Fewer moulds required to meet rate
- No complex backing structure = lower costs per mould
Flexible Processing
- Curing of conventional autoclave or oven-style prepregs, including phenolics
- Liquid Resin Infusion, such as VARTM, SCRIMP or light RTM
- Resin Film Infusion (RFI)
- Fibre-Metal Laminates
- New Quickstep techniques
- Lower material costs using Resin Spray Transmission (RST)
- Reduce end product weight and part count via Melding
Improved Cored Structures
- Low pressure processing permits the use of lighter weight cores
- Cured honeycomb structures have less read-through of the cell patterns, but with good filleting of the joints
- Low resin viscosity improves surface wetting of foam cores
Lower Costs, Higher Volumes
An extensive cost study comparing Quickstep to autoclave processing of 10,000 automotive hoods (bonnets) per year showed Quickstep:
- Reduced materials cost by 21%
- Lowered tooling investment by 62%
- Reduced capital investment by 62%
- Lowered layup, bagging and curing labour 25%
- Reduced energy costs by 80%
A number of parts produced using the Quickstep™ Process to date have had superior performance to autoclave, vacuum and atmospheric curing methods in terms of strength, stiffness, surface finish and appearance whilst achieving aerospace grade void contents of less than 2%. Resin development is an ongoing program and it is an objective that all resins approved for use with the Quickstep™ Processes provide equivalent or superior performance to autoclave.
Any of the foregoing competitive advantages would generally be considered a highly valuable improvement in the manufacturing of composites, however, when combined they could represent the potential for a manufacturing revolution within the advanced composites industry.