TE Wire & Cable Thermocouple Solutions Blog

Whether you make composite parts for commercial aircraft, defense, automotive or sports, you know why you do what you do and how to do it. That’s why you have clients who trust your products and trust your team to make them to the highest quality every time. 

The good news is chemistry and physics are the same. They'll never change. It really doesn’t matter if you are making barrel section 41 for the Boeing 787, the Predator drone composite wing or a super lightweight Tour de France racing bike. Recipes for production might be different between manufacturers but the end goal is a constant: Make a lightweight structure that can contribute to advancement of aircraft, military and consumer lives.  

Are you in the aviation/aerospace market? Do you manufacture aerospace composites?

Then no doubt you are aware that CAMX 2016 is right around the corner. The exhibition booth spaces have been sold out for months. It helps that a well-known Mickey Mouse operation is located next door. I may even visit Disney’s California Adventure Park myself.  

I had the privilege of attending the latest NADCAP meetings in Montreal late in June. Because so many of our customers in both metallurgy and aerospace composites manufacturing require NADCAP certification, I want to be sure we’re on top of all the requirements. So, I regularly attend two or three meetings yearly and sit in on the Composites Task Group.

At the SAMPE Long Beach conference and exhibition this past May, our management and sales team had the chance to speak with various exhibitors and attendees on topics related to the importance and value of proper thermocouple application to aviation and aerospace autoclave manufacturing processes.

The molds or tools used for forming and mass producing composite parts can be made of many materials. However, for mass production of complex high performance aerospace composite parts, the material has to be hard enough to maintain its dimensional and surface finish characteristics. The most common material for commercial and military programs that I have seen during my plant tours is invar (64FeNi), a high performance metal with low coefficient of thermal expansion.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to SAMPE Long Beach 2016. Granted, who wouldn’t want to be in Long Beach in May? These are exciting times for the aerospace autoclaves composites manufacturing industry. The aerospace market is expected to reach $301 billion in 2018 with a global growth rate of 5.1% for the next ten years. Recent successes like the SpaceX landings and ongoing projects at the International Space Station have us all looking to the heavens with a wanderlust for what’s out there.

In all our years of experience with aviation and aerospace composites manufacturers, there is one overriding truth: Thermocouple failure during autoclave composites curing and the parts waste that results is NOT an option. The secrets to achieving zero failures are outlined in the following infographic.

As any aviation composites manufacturer will agree, failure is not an option in the curing process. Superior quality is a "must have" for parts used in the latest aerospace and aviation technologies.  

Nearly a half-century after man set foot on the moon and returned safely to Earth, the wanderlust to escape Earth’s gravity and learn more about ‘what’s out there’ is as strong as ever. A great deal of progress is being made in this regard:

• NASA’s recent Space Launch System announcement shows they’re dedicated to the ultimate goal of landing on asteroids and, eventually, Mars.

• Virgin Galactic has a more modest goal of returning to more frequent human spaceflight, including taking ordinary citizens (with deep pockets) into low-Earth orbit – in style, of course.  

• The SpaceX Crew Dragon team recently completed propulsive hover and parachute drop tests that are mission critical to success.