While it’s no secret that carbon fiber materials are transforming the space industry thanks to their weight savings, they can be particularly challenging to apply to gigantic spacecraft structures such as those that make up reusable rockets. Not only do such large composite panels require hundreds of thousands of manufacturing hours, they often involve multiple machines that take up valuable space and add various inefficiencies to the process including increased tooling and maintenance. Unfortunately, fabricating a large automated fiber placement (AFP) machine with both the high laydown rates and surface coverage capability needed to produce giant panels and other large structures on schedule is beyond the means of many machine builders.
