Reducing Production Cost & Lowering Component Weight

The company is renowned for first-class composite design and manufacturing solutions to various industries including aerospace, defense, transportation, medical, and green technology. With its new eight-head Tailored Fiber Placement (TFP) machine, RAMPF Composite Solutions’ team of experienced aerospace and composites engineers now offers even better and faster solutions to the toughest technical challenges.

This is achieved through TFP’s unparalleled freedom to selectively place and orient the carbon fiber and fiberglass filaments where strength or weight optimization is required. The structural performance of the composite is maximized while also providing for greatest possible weight savings, reduced carbon fiber usage, and lower cost.

From stainless steel to carbon fiber

In a recent TFP success story, RAMPF Composite Solutions transformed a stainless steel part used in commercial aircraft to a part made almost entirely of carbon fiber, resulting in the part weighing four and a half times less without an increase in costs. In fact, the customer was able to realize additional operational cost savings because of the significant weight reduction.

Furthermore, only five lay-up preforms were produced compared to the 75 that would have been required using traditional carbon composite design approaches.

Larry Fitzgerald, CEO of RAMPF Composite Solutions – “Reducing production cost while lowering com-ponent weight in complex composite parts has often proved to be a mutually exclusive challenge. Now, thanks to this exciting technology and the outstanding composites design skills of our team, the ad-vantages of Tailored Fiber Placement can be used to design complex parts to be lightweight and cost competitive at the same time.”