CompositesWorld
Issue link: https://cw.epubxp.com/i/697353
33 CompositesWorld.com NEWS increased to €8.3 million [US$9.38 million]. We've added some signif- cant customer parts to our workload over the last several years, and needed to expand." To ensure a pool of trained workers in the region, the company works with a school in El Puerto, providing internships and training that counts toward classroom credits, to gain future employees. Gonce identifes 17 aircraft customer programs currently in production, with parts ranging from longitudinal beams for engine cowls, to fairings and covers, to interior parts. Airbus commercial, Airbus Defense & Space, and Sevilla-based Alestis are the primary customers. All parts are hand laid, and 95% of them are cored sandwich construction, while 5% are monolithic (uncored). Although manufacture of layup tooling is currently outsourced to several tooling subcontractors, Jerez has begun producing its own trim tools (more on that, below). Likewise, honeycomb core shaping is outsourced, but plant manager Rosario Lopez says Jerez is starting to do some shaping internally. Te tour starts in the facility's lean manufacturing meeting area within the large, open, busy building. Here — and, at each Carbures facility — a stand-up meeting is held each morning, next to wall-mounted manufacturing charts, in accord with lean manufacturing procedures. Te goal is transparency across the workforce while ensuring implementation of quality procedures. Carbures Jerez holds numerous quality certifcations — Nadcap in composites and ultrasonic inspection, ISO9001, ISO14001 — and process certifcations from Airbus and Airbus Military. After a quick look at the repair workshop, where core edge sealing is completed, and at the two freezers used to store Hexcel (Parla, Spain) carbon/epoxy prepreg, Lopez shows of the prep area where molds are cleaned and mold release is applied before transfer into an adjacent cleanroom for layup. Here, more than 20 multi-person teams execute well-choreographed part layup processes, quickly laying up kitted plies previously cut on a CNC fatbed cutter from Zünd Systemtechnik AG (Altstätten, Swit- zerland). Lopez points out that each cut ply is identity-stamped before kitting, just one element that ensures the traceability that is typical in aerospace production for each part. When layups are ready, prepped and bagged (bagging mate- rials are supplied by Airtech International Inc., Huntington Beach, CA, US), tools are wheeled to the staging area in front of a 12m by 4m autoclave, supplied by Olmar (Gijon, Spain). A smaller, (1.6m El Burgo de Osma Illescas Jerez de la Frontera El Puerto de Santa Maria Carbures Spain: A tour in triplicate Spanish Tier 2 carbon compos- ites fabricator Carbures hosted CompositesWorld on a tour of three of its facilities, from left to right, in Jerez de la Frontera, Illescas and El Burgo de Osma. Source | CW / Photo | Sara Black