Orbital Composites
Canvas Category Machinery : Special Purpose : Aerospace
Building breakthrough products by redefining Composite Manufacturing for Mission-Critical Applications, with a dedicated team of dreamers and doers; looking to create better solutions for mankind. Building Next Generation Aerospace, Defense and Energy Products with the Highest Performance, Lowest Cost, and Fastest Cycle Times.
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Could AI build cities in space?
A New Age of Materials Is Dawning, for Everything From Smartphones to Missiles
Modern composites, starting with Bakelite, were pioneered in the early part of the 20th century. Other composites were invented at a steady pace, and the industry began to hit its stride in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when automated processes for turning things like carbon fiber into giant structures like airplane bodies and windmill blades reached maturity.
In just the past couple of years, a number of startups have developed processes for creating all sorts of small objects from composites, in a way that is fast and inexpensive. These include Berkeley, Calif.-based Arris Composites, 9T Labs in Zurich, Orbital Composites in Silicon Valley, and others.
Arris shapes carbon fibers using a process that resembles wire bending—imagine how something like a coat hanger is made—says CEO Riley Reese. Then, those shaped fibers are put into a resin, and the resulting form is put into a custom mold that applies heat and pressure to further compress, shape and strengthen the part. 9T Labs uses a similar process, but starts by using “additive manufacturing” (similar to 3-D printing) to lay down narrow strips of carbon fiber into a particular shape, and then molding it in a way similar to Arris’s process, says Eichenhofer.
Orbital Composites is using substantially different processes, says CEO Amolak Badesha. Using off-the-shelf industrial robots with custom print heads that spit out carbon fiber, the company 3-D prints shapes in a process that resembles Harold’s purple crayon, for those familiar with the children’s book. The difference is that while Harold could draw in three dimensions any shape he liked, Orbital uses removable molds to support its carbon-fiber shapes as they’re being printed.
Orbital Composites is using robots to 3D print giant wind turbine blades
One of the challenges of building a new wind farm is transportation: If a wind turbine blade is 200 feet long, or even longer, it can’t easily travel down highways. In fact, moving a wind turbine can take a year of planning.
The difficulty of delivery pushes up the cost of wind power. But one startup has designed a system to use 3D printing and robotics to manufacture wind turbines in the place where they will be used. “We want to be able to manufacture the foundation, the tower, and the blades all on-site, which is a radical shift from how it’s done today,” says Amolak Badesha, CEO of the startup, called Orbital Composites. Orbital Composites already uses its technology to print drones and satellite parts. To make blades for a wind turbine, it will 3D-print a giant mold, and then print the blade inside the mold. All of the equipment can be delivered to a site in shipping containers.
The company developed new tech that allows it to print composite materials at high speeds. Right now, the wind industry uses labor-intensive manufacturing techniques. “Most people don’t know this, but we actually have zero wind blade factories left in the U.S.,” Badesha says. “We used to have more, but they’ve all been offshored because of how manual this process is.” (To qualify for incentives for domestic manufacturing, he says, some companies bring the blades to the U.S. only for sanding and painting.)