STUNNING news! We just ultrasonic spot welded the first frame clips to skin and stringer! We effectuated the welds in the lower shell of the thermoplastic fuselage demonstrator using our robotic welding process. After much effort poured into welding process development, hardware development, coupon testing and programming our industrial robot, we took a deep breath and went for it! We are enjoying all the lessons learnt and we keep on learning every step of the way. By the end we will have finished welding the other 200+ clips, we will definitely have gained very valuable experience towards de-risking and demonstrating thermoplastic composite technology for industrial applications. We are sure that Airbus‘ site visit today will be productive and pave the way for future collaborative projects in automation of thermoplastic composite manufacturing.
Great work, SAM XL STUNNING team: Abhas Choudhary, André Florindo, Syrine Zbidi, Rik Tonnaer, Berthil Grashof, Dave Kroezen and Menno Verkade.