Omax 55100 JetMachining Center at the High-Performance Materials Institute is used to cut a wide variety of components, including carbon fiber composites.


“Te composite materials we work with are really strong,


and I can’t think of a material we haven’t cut on the Omax,” said Jerry Horne, an HPMI engineer who cuts materials for students and researchers. “It doesn’t matter how strong the material is because the Omax will cut through anything.” Te machine is designed to accommodate the cutting of large, complex parts and can handle sheet materials of up to 5 × 10' (1.524 × 3.048 m) in dimension. Furthermore, its user-friend- ly controls simplify the programming of traditionally complex techniques. In fact, Horne can machine student components directly from a CAD drawing or DXF file.


Getting Closer Te era of buckypaper use in production is getting closer,


insist the scientists and engineers at HPMI. According to Frank Allen, HPMI operations director, the facility was producing buckypaper at the size of a quarter back when he joined the institute in 2001, and now it is making much larger sheets using a batch production process. Eleven years ago, the price of the best quality single-


walled nanotubes was approximately $500 a gram. Today, single-walled nanotubes are about $200 a gram and the price continues to decline. Furthermore, multi-walled


nanotubes are available for purchase by the pound and nanofibers by the barrel. Allen noted that the facility tailors which form of nanotubes it uses based on properties re- quired for the buckypaper. “We don’t always need the more expensive single-wall


nanotubes to get the properties we want,” Allen said. “Te quality of the nanotubes we use makes a difference, and right now we are trying to make it cheaper by improving the manu- facturing process of the buckypaper.” In an attempt to make buckypaper more commercially fea-


sible, the High-Performance Materials Institute is looking to scale up its production by working on a prototype that would produce buckypaper strips at 5 fpm (1.5 m/min). While HPMI research on buckypaper is at the forefront of


a technological revolution, it is still in its infancy stage. But de- spite the hurdles that come with trying to produce buckypaper for practical use, the researchers at Florida State University are not about to give up. And why should they? Even Tomas Edi- son’s improvement of the light bulb did not happen overnight. He relied on existing research to invent a total of seven system elements before the practical application of electric light was possible. Buckypaper use in aerospace production will like- wise eventually see the light of day. ✈


Aerospace & Defense Manufacturing 2013 133


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