Tuesday, January 19, 2010

ASLI announces new partnership for composite airframe materials.

ALSI is relaunched in 2010 with the formation of a new partnership with NSW Company CST Composites, the University New South Wales (UNSW) & the Co-operative Research Center for Advanced Composites Structures (CRC-ACS).

Under this partnership new airframe materials for the Pathfinder 1B will be designed for ASLI by UNSW undergraduate student Jendi Kepple from UNSW, and manufactured using CST advanced filament winding technology.

The formation of this new partnership allows ALSI to aggressively target a launch of the completed Pathfinder 1B rocket for 2010, paving the way toward solicitation of new student payload programs in 2011.

About CST

CST composites or ‘Composite Spars and Tube’ as it was originally known was founded in 1995. From its inception the company has focused on the design and manufacture of cost effective yet high quality filament wound tubing to service the Marine, industrial and high-tech markets.
In the early days activities were focused in the marine market where CST worked closely with development classes such as the 12’ skiffs to produce carbon spars that were strong, responsive, light and reliable. Since then the company has grown consistently year upon year, broadening its applications into the industrial and high tech Sectors. The company employs 24+ staff in a 1000sq M high tech facility in Kurnell, Sydney Australia. To date more than 1200 spars have been supplied and over 15,000 tubes have been manufactured.
The strength of CST lies with its unique filament winding technology which has been developed and evolved since 1995. Today the company now runs three filament winding machines and two pultrusion machines giving a production capacity capability of more than 20 tonnes of composite per year. CST is now the largest user of carbon tow in Australia and New Zealand. Our tubes and profiles are exported worldwide with significant markets in Europe, USA, China and Asia.

www.cstcomposites.com

About CRC-CS

The primary aim of the Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Composite Structures (CRC-ACS), or Composites CRC, is to provide a focus for the development of advanced technologies which foster the growth of an efficient, globally-competitive, Australian composite industry.

This is achieved by conducting research and development programs into the design, manufacture, testing, durability and supportability of advanced composite structures.

The Composites CRC brings together skills from some of Australia's leading research providers to support its own core staff of thirty research engineers, scientists and technicians.

These highly skilled experts work with industry to develop new technologies to improve the cost-competitiveness and structural performance of composite materials in an ever expanding market place.

www.crc-acs.com.au