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PLASTICS, COMPOSITES & ADVANCED MATERIALS
ACS Australia – Exploring the endless possibilities of carbon fibre composites For almost 30 years, Advanced Composite Structures Australia (ACS Australia) has been delivering high-value engineering services to develop unique composites-related product and technology solutions for its customers. Projects at ACS Australia typically start with concept development and engineering, followed by the manufacture of prototypes to demonstrate and validate the product. Over five years ago, the company expanded into series manufacture and the assembly of low-volume, high-value, composite products, and has made strategic investments into advanced manufacturing equipment including automated machining and additive manufacturing. Today, ACS Australia stands out from its competitors by providing its customers with a “one-stop-shop” for the development and supply of new composite-related products, providing a fast-track path to market. The talented engineers and technicians at ACS Australia are continuously being challenged by a diverse range of projects where advanced composite materials are being applied. Recently they have manufactured three unique products utilising carbon fibre composites with the support of in-house Industry 4.0-based manufacturing tools.
The assembled structure is stiff and lightweight. Nominally the composite structure is 2kg, enabling the user to manually load and unload from the aircraft wing strut without the need for ground support equipment. Moreover, the modular design permits disassembly of components to individually adjust cameras and electrical equipment connections. The structure is made with laminated carbon fibre at a nominal thickness of 2mm, with integrated flanges for each subcomponent, to protect joins from dust and water ingress. Additionally, the blackened interior offers reduced internal reflections and dampens light leaks, enhancing imaging quality. A gel coat was used on the exterior for UV protection, while achieving a high-quality surface finish.
The carbon fibre housings were manufactured via resin infusion in a specifically developed cylindrical tool for batch production. The cylindrical tool was designed in CATIA CAD and manufactured via epoxy resin lay-up of GFRP (glass fibrereinforced plastic), making a tough durable mould for reuse. To achieve the high-quality surface finish on the final part a twill weave 0/90 carbon fibre fabric was selected, and a clear gel coat was applied for a gloss aesthetic finish. Operational ports for electromagnetic wiring and attachments were machined utilising in-house CNC cutting.
Aircraft aerial imaging camera housing
Electromagnetic sensor housings ACS Australia manufactured a batch of 25 carbon fibre composite housings, to be used as an electromagnetic sensor housing in a mining application. The housings were completed wholly in-house at ACS Australia’s Melbourne facility. ACS Australia manufactured a carbon fibre composite camera housing for attachment on a light aircraft for in-flight aerial imaging. The camera housing required one frontfacing dome port and two downward facing lens ports, allowing for medium-format cameras to be mounted inside with varying angles. The carbon fibre housing was designed, manufactured and assembled at ACS Australia in Port Melbourne.
AMT JUN/JUL 2021
This is a good example of how ACS Australia combines both composite manufacturing capability with advanced Industry 4.0 CNC machine tooling. These capabilities allow an SME like ACS Australia to serve customers in a timely manner with advanced design and manufacturing all in one organisation. Furthermore, this enables higher-tolerance components to be validated, which is critical for precision industry applications as in this case.
Safety-critical animatronic structure ACS Australia designed, manufactured and assembled a number of complex geometry, carbon fibre composite animatronic components for Creature Technology Co, one of the world’s leading creators of attractions for large theme parks. The largest component was a moving head section with stringent safety requirements (six times higher than some aerospace
