Axial Composites Industries recently launched!

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^{"AUTOMATING THERMOPLASTIC COMPOSITES MANUFACTURING."}

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^{TL;DR: Drones and robotics are driving demand for high-performance materials at an all-time high. Axial Composites makes it easier to manufacture aerospace-grade carbon fiber parts thanks to their bespoke 5-axis manufacturing cell.}

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https://youtu.be/9H3dZBSVojE

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Founded by Giuseppe Rapisarda & Rollo Tully

They started with manufacturing UAVs together back in university, and now they are creating a manufacturing cell to make better composite parts for aerospace and robotics.

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Why work on this?

Conventional composites manufacturing faces long lead times (2-10 weeks)

This is how the standard process looks like:

1.     Mold manufacturing (1-4 weeks, $10k–$100k+).

2.     Manual layup (8-40 labor hours @ 30-80$/hr).

3.     Part curing (3-20hr, autoclave CAPEX: $35k-$500k+).

4.     Post-processing (2-5 days).

One design iteration burns weeks and money; a small design change results in going back to step 1.

Engineering teams need faster lead times, lower barriers to entry for manufacturing, and more design freedom.

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The solution

Axial Composites condenses all of those steps in a single manufacturing cell, producing parts in a day instead of weeks, offering unprecedented design opportunities.

Their MK1 custom manufacturing cell is equipped with:

• 5 degrees of freedom for non-planar operations
• thermal chamber for high-performance materials
• switchable end effectors for additive and subtractive manufacturing of composites
• 1.5m tall build chamber for large structures production

Their software stack is the first optimized 5-axis slicer for continuous fiber that can deposit material along the stress fields direction of the component, which allows them to produce parts as strong as metals but as light as plastics.

They engineer and produce their own reinforced thermoplastic stock in-house. They believe that material science advancements lie at the base of most significant step changes in the progress of a civilization, and their fundamental belief is that they have barely scratched the surface of what these materials can achieve.

P.S. They weren’t able to break the test sample shown in the gif, they hit the upper limit of the crane, and the aluminum structure started to bend instead. More testing soon!

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Learn More

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^{🌐 Visit www.axialcomposite.com to learn more.}

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^{🤝  If you would like to try their parts, hit them up! Any intros to aerospace/robotics companies are also greatly appreciated. Just reach out on X or via email here.}

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^{👣 Follow Axial Composites Industries on LinkedIn.}