TE Wire & Cable Thermocouple Solutions Blog

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.

No doubt, many of you are familiar with a famous Tom Cruise scene in the movie Jerry McGuire. Well, this is my "HELP ME, HELP YOU!" moment.

Over the past year, we’ve put a lot of effort and brainpower into redesigning our website, making it easier for you to navigate and adding useful, informative content. We have had to familiarize ourselves with the meaning of buzzwords like SEO, Lead Gen, Customer Journey, Analytics, Marketing Automation, and Digital Marketing. All of this helps me (and our entire TEW team) to help you.

Whether you’re an end user, buyer, supplier or distributor of wire and cable in the industrial OEM space, when you’re looking for technical specifications and additional information, these top four products are a good place to start:

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.

Last month, I shared some exciting news about the pioneering efforts of the student engineers at the University of Southern California's Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (USC-RPL). As promised, here's an update on their latest efforts.

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.

After achieving success in downhole applications in North America with one of our high temperature extruded thermocouple products, TE Wire & Cable is pleased to announce that we’ve joined the Oil & Gas Downhole Team, a dedicated solutions team comprised of Marmon Engineered Wire & Cable companies including RSCC, Kerite and Harbour.

Whether you’re using thermocouple wire in the aerospace, industrial or metallurgy markets, I have little doubt that the better you understand the ‘devil is in the details’ when it comes to making the right wire design selection for your applications, the better your chances of success.