Satellite Sessions

Thermoplastic materials have many desirable attributes for aerospace applications such as: Superior out of plane properties, impact resistance, rapid melt processing, and unlimited out time. These materials were studied for many applications the 1980’s, but never quite took hold in production, primarily due to the high production cost of autoclave processing these materials compared to thermoset composites.

Today, thermoplastics are making a strong comeback for a wide variety of airframe applications, as manufacturing process technology has advanced to allow options to economically fabric.

Moderator: Nick Melillo (AeroDef Executive Committee Member), Technical Director, Composites Manufacturing Technology Center, Advanced Technology International.

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The development of Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser has roots back to the mid-1980’s. However, advances in spaceframes construction, propulsion, thermal protection systems, and launch vehicles, among other things, helped Sierra Nevada Corporation convince NASA in 2016 that its Cargo System should be a primary service provider to the International Space Station. In this webinar, the Dream Chaser Cargo System’s capability will be highlighted. In addition, the use of advanced composites will be discussed as an enabling technology for spaceship development and ultimately space exploration.

Moderator: Steve Parsons, Fellow, Manufacturing Technology, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company

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This webinar will look at laser sintering of polymers for aerospace applications. Laser sintered polymers is perhaps the oldest additive manufacturing technology used in aircraft flight but potentially the least known. We will delve into the benefits and challenges, history and applications, with an unfiltered discussion by LS polymer end users and providers.

Moderator: Eric Barnes, Additive Manufacturing Fellow, Northrop Grumman Corporation

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With all the buzzwords and hype surrounding Industry 4.0, the aerospace and defense manufacturing sector has continued to lag behind other industries in its urgency for the adoption of automation.

Paired with an ever-growing talent shortage, this lack of operational technology has left many Aerodef manufacturers small and large making decisions mostly on gut instinct alone, leading to remarkable inefficiencies that affect every component of a company’s operation from significant downtime and production losses. With mounting competition and increasing pressure on pricing, it’s never been more important for Aerodef manufacturers to deliver the best product faster than ever, meaning help is needed and it’s needed it right now.

Enter Industry 4.0, the silver bullet to solve manufacturing’s problems right? Not exactly. In fact, 81% of IIoT implementations fail (McKinsey, 2020) due to the time-consuming and prohibitively expensive nature of implementation and deployment.

Organizations are now realizing that data needs to be used constructively and appropriately enterprise-wide– even by non-technical end-users – to make informed decisions quickly and uncover opportunities for the business to improve. We have on our hands a whole new arsenal of tools to drive the shop floor with. This session is designed for the manufacturer who is tired of inaction and is ready to start leveraging or accelerate their usage of these tools to make an impact on their bottom line right today and into the future.

Moderator: Graham Immerman, VP of Marketing, MachineMetrics

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