Manufacturing Technology – Aerospace’s Secret Sauce

Aviation Week walks you through some of the main advances in composites and metallics manufacturing that are changing how aircraft are made.

One of the first of these was automated tape laying which has taken over from time-consuming manual lay-up for large carbon-fiber components that are flat or have simple curves. An ATL machine lays down a single, wide carbon-fiber prepreg tape, the machine head pressing the tape against the tool to consolidate the layers of material.