Advanced Composites
What once was strictly reserved for high dollar military and aerospace applications, advanced composite techniques have made their way into a wide variety of industries. As the economics of these applications became more in line with end user price points, industries such as wind, transportation and marine have now fully embraced the advantages that come with it. One of these techniques, vacuum infusion, while not a new concept, is now seemingly commonplace in areas of each industry. It is now the number one request we receive in our private label manufacturing area of our parts business.
As little as three years ago, parts customers, when requesting infused product, were a very small subset of our business and therefore a small team would handle these requests as they came in. Now, over 40% of our lamination work runs through the infusion department. Moreover, almost all large components such as boat hulls, wind blades, flight simulators and architectural structures are designed and engineered to be infused. This know-how has even lead us into infusion on the tooling side, providing carbon fiber, high temperature epoxy tooling to service the pre-preg fabrication market.
With this growth into the advanced composites realm, our team has also been successful in bringing the capabilities and investment needed to provide pre-preg built products. Currently serving mainly the simulation/trainer market as well as military and defense our pre-preg team allows us to provide the turn-key solutions we are known for in to these markets as well.
As little as three years ago, parts customers, when requesting infused product, were a very small subset of our business and therefore a small team would handle these requests as they came in. Now, over 40% of our lamination work runs through the infusion department. Moreover, almost all large components such as boat hulls, wind blades, flight simulators and architectural structures are designed and engineered to be infused. This know-how has even lead us into infusion on the tooling side, providing carbon fiber, high temperature epoxy tooling to service the pre-preg fabrication market.
With this growth into the advanced composites realm, our team has also been successful in bringing the capabilities and investment needed to provide pre-preg built products. Currently serving mainly the simulation/trainer market as well as military and defense our pre-preg team allows us to provide the turn-key solutions we are known for in to these markets as well.