CompositesWorld
Issue link: https://cw.epubxp.com/i/450689
33 CompositesWorld.com NEWS N E W S N S N E W S E N W S W Te activities and expansion at Exelis Aerostructures' Salt Lake City location are attracting attention from not only new customers but also other OEMs within the aerostructures community, including Boeing, Northrop Grumman (Palmdale, CA, US) and Spirit AeroSystems (Wichita, KS, US). "A lot of us look at this as a chance to build a legacy," Blair notes, but adds that despite the serious chal- lenges inherent to the advanced composites territory, "It's a lot of fun." Struts and tubes: STaR power One of the newest operations at the CDMC harkens back to the Exelis' flament winding legacy. Te company has licensed technology from Bodair SA (Oupeye, Belgium) for Exelis' STaR (struts, tubes and rods) product line. Exelis plans to use Bodair's manufacturing cell, which encompasses flament winding equip- ment, curing technology, machining, drilling, NDI, painting, priming and bushing installation, to produce a variety of foor beam and wingbox struts, control rods and torque tubes for aircraft. Notably, STaR enables easy reconfguration of fttings and bushings to meet customer and application requirements. "Te combination of the unique manufacturing process and automation technology posi- tions us to meet the market demands, with the ability to produce upward of 40,000 STaR parts per year," Blair adds. STaR's production fexibility and potential unit output helped Exelis land one of its largest programs to date — manufacturing the main deck foor beam struts for the Airbus A380 aircraft. Exelis makes 95 A380 struts per shipset and will manufacture 240 struts per month at rate production. Plugging into potential ventures Our fnal stop in the CDMC revealed a new Exelis venture that has nothing to do with aerospace, but demands all of the performance hallmarks of the company's other work. Te product, called the Bear Claw, is a flament wound "plug" used during drilling in oil and gas produc- tion (see "Learn More," p. 31). Sized from 114 to 140 mm in diameter, Bear Claws measure about 0.75m in length. Te plugs are assembled at Exelis up to a certain point, beyond which they can be custom- ized easily to meet customers' diferent end-use requirements. Exelis currently makes 1,100-plus plugs per month and delivered more than 12,000 in 2014. "It's a high-temperature, high-pressure, pretty demanding environment," Blair says. "It's not aerospace, but it's like aerospace." Bear Claws are a harbinger of ventures yet to come. In fact, if known growth opportunities at Exelis come to fruition as planned, the company expects to add another 13,000m 2 to the CDMC in 2015. SGS has designed specifc cutting tool technologies that combine substrate, geometry, edge preparation and coating to withstand the complex conditions of Composite applications requiring minimal fber breakout and delamination. Greater Effciency www.sgstool.com 330-686-5700 Manufactured in the USA Jef Sloan is editor-in-chief of CompositesWorld, and has been engaged in plastics- and composites- industry journalism for 22 years. jef@compositesworld.com Exelis Aerostructures