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04/10/2011
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Technology consultancy and precision-manufacturing specialist Prodrive has doubled the size of its composites facility, moving from motorsport-sized manufacturing batches to runs of several thousand.
 The expansion is driven by the company's recent contract wins with three highly-demanding manufacturers of premium sports cars. When added to established defence, marine and aerospace customers, Prodrive's composites business now has an order book worth more than £40 million.
Meeting the challenge of rapidly growing volumes required a combination of capital investment, recruitment and process improvement. "It would have been easy to simply expand the factory, but that would not have addressed the fundamental challenge," explains Prodrive's composites manager Ian Handscombe. "Clearly we did need more space, but the key to making this a sustainable business geared-up for the growing industry-wide use of composites is to take this opportunity to work on improving our processes and finding new ways of helping our skilled people to work more efficiently."
The biggest investment has been in two additional high-spec autoclaves, together worth around £800,000. The larger unit accepts parts up to 2m diameter by 4.3m long; the other 1.5m by 2.3m long. As well as allowing substantial panels to be manufactured in one piece, they open up new possibilities that could further improve high-volume production efficiency: with 350oC and 200 psi now available, the use of thermoplastic composites becomes possible, with much faster cycle times and easier recycling.
£500,000 has been invested in a new, five-axis milling machine, complete with vacuum clamping and dust extraction. It now takes only 20 minutes to trim a large post-mould component that previously took four hours by hand. "Supplementing the manual processes with appropriate automation has increased throughput, allowed us to ensure consistently high first-time quality, and we have reduced waste by around a third," says Handscombe.
A second machine for the NC-cutting of raw sheet material (pre-preg) is being introduced, with CAD software to create optimised nesting of pre-cuts direct from component CAD data. The NC machine also allows automated cutting of thicker material (up to 2mm) to reduce the number of layers required.
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Author
John Challen
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