Boeing is using an epoxy/aluminium honeycomb composite for tools that
produce highly accurate prototypes of exterior aircraft skins
The Boeing Aircraft Company, working in conjunction with RenShape
Solutions at the former's tooling centre in Missouri, has developed a low
cost tooling for composites (LCTC) process, which was subsequently used
to build eight 2.1x2.8m tools for prototyping bismaleimide exterior
aircraft skins.
The LCTC process uses RenShape's RenPaste RP4040 syntactic epoxy patties
in combination with an aluminium honeycomb substructure, to provide a
cost effective rapid tooling system. Resulting models can be machined
directly from CAD data, and are capable of withstanding temperatures of
up to 193°C.