Carbon fiber manufacturing is harder than you thnk

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webguy
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Carbon fiber manufacturing is harder than you thnk

Boeing continues to struggle with its Dreamliner, 787
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-23/boeing-787-issues-mushroom-with-no-fix-in-view-air-lease-says

Quote:

Production issues plaguing Boeing Co.’s 787 Dreamliner “seem to have mushroomed,” with the planemaker and U.S. regulators still grappling to find an appropriate fix, according to John Plueger, chief executive officer of Air Lease Corp.
...

Boeing hasn’t delivered any of the advanced aircraft since October while it inspects and repairs tiny imperfections that have cropped up on the interior lining of the jets’ carbon-fiber airframes. With about 80 Dreamliners sitting in storage, restarting deliveries is crucial to the company’s turnaround after it burned through about $20 billion last year.
...
Some of the wide-body jets due to be delivered to Air Lease have been delayed more than 12 months, giving the Los Angeles-based company and its customers the right to bolt from their original contracts, Plueger said. Engineers are still verifying that the engineering tolerances for roughness wider than a hair’s breadth and shims -- the filler for the tiny gaps or wrinkles -- won’t pose any threat to safety...

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Re: Carbon fiber manufacturing is harder than you thnk

Yep. Quote from a colleague in the biz... "The dream of every composites engineer is that they'll make it out of metal."

Composite design, certification, production, and continued operational safety are way different for airplanes than windsurfing equipment...

Bill Herderich

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Re: Carbon fiber manufacturing is harder than you thnk

Maybe Boeing should do like windsurf board makers and put on an extra thin layer made of wood, bamboo, or in the case of Webguy - cork.

What happens in a black hole stays in a black hole.

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Re: Carbon fiber manufacturing is harder than you thnk

Funnily enough, the British built the Dehavilland Mosquito using a sandwich of plywood with a balsa core.
https://www.si.edu/object/de-havilland-dh-98-btt-mk-35-mosquito%3Anasm_A19640023000

Bill Herderich

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Re: Carbon fiber manufacturing is harder than you thnk
windlord wrote:

Yep. Quote from a colleague in the biz... "The dream of every composites engineer is that they'll make it out of metal."

Composite design, certification, production, and continued operational safety are way different for airplanes than windsurfing equipment...

Or, sailboats. Acute

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