Lucas Industries

Lucas Industries performs contract research and development work along with internal R&D in support of composite tooling, composite processing, fixturing and assembly technologies. Expanded capabilities that include compression molding, resin transfer molding, thermoforming and autoclave processing have been implemented over the past few years in response to customer needs.

Advanced composite materials require an in-depth understanding of specific processes and methods intended for use in the part production environment. By combining mold design skill with processing expertise Lucas designers offer technical advantages when communicating with customer engineers.

Recommendations as to the best type of tooling material for a particular application and manufacturing technique are often key parts of an overall design and build package that Lucas Industries provides. When customers need to make critical decisions regarding part and mold tolerancing, our broad experience base gives Lucas a competitive edge in solving their problems in a cost effective manner.

Significant development benefits are realized when tool design and tool fabrication are accomplished in a facility with composite processing capacities. Rapid concept testing feeds directly into the design improvement cycle before expensive tool fabrication phases are undertaken, resulting in higher quality and successful production systems.

R&D Case Study 1 - Air Separator

This project required reverse engineering of a multipiece composite mold family from an existing fiberglass epoxy component. The part functions as a sand and particle separater inlet on certain military cargo helicopters that use high performance turbine engines. Major damage can occur to these engines if foreign objects or excessive amounts of debris are allowed to enter the intake sections of the system. Spare parts were urgently needed to support flight operations occurring around the work in harsh environments. One existing spare part was available as a master but functioning lamination molds were no longer in existence.

Lucas engineers created a full set of complex, high temperature tooling molds along with an assembly fixture for final bonding and inspection tasks. In this case sample parts were fabricated to demonstrate functional performance of each mold and to generate the actual planning instructions for making all the detail parts. A full set of the details was fabricated and then assembled using the master assembly fixture to ensure the correct spatial orientation of the final assembly.

A turn-key package of composite parts, molds, assembly and inspection fixtures was delivered to the customer along with detailed specifications for complete assembly production.