The Establishment Restaurant, 75 Princeton St, Chelmsford, MA 01863

The Establishment Restaurant, 75 Princeton St, Chelmsford, MA 01863

A Boston Chapter meeting to be held on Thursday, September 8, 2022, at 5:30 PM at the University of Massachusetts Lowell in the Plastics Engineering Department.      

The meeting will be hosted by Davide Masato, Assistant Professor/Plastics Engineering of the University, and held in Ball Hall Room 202B (219 Riverside St, Lowell, MA 01854).  

Parking will be available in the Riverside Lot (307-311 Riverside St, Lowell, MA 01854). From the parking lot, walk back towards University Avenue and you`ll find Ball Hall to your left. Upon arrival, please call Dr. Masato at 857-218-0560 for any questions about parking or room location.   

The meeting will also be available virtually using Dr. Masato’s link: https://uml.zoom.us/j/5923778611. 

This will be an organizational meeting to establish our plans for the coming year and re-establish the Student Chapter at the University. We will also be soliciting officers for the coming year. SAMPE’s new President, Scott Stephenson, will also be in attendance and be updating us on SAMPE’s upcoming plans for events and growth.   

Please confirm your attendance (in-person or virtual) by sending an email to info@sampe.org by Monday, September 5, 2022.  

Please feel free to contact Rich Caruso at rpcaruso@gmail.com or Mike Buck at mbuck111@outlook.com if you have any questions.  

We look forward to seeing many of you at this meeting

TPI Composites and our partners Hexion, Krauss Maffei, and the University of Delaware, have completed the design of an advanced composite driver-side commercial passenger car door. The project goals for this component include a 42.5% weight savings and less than a $5 cost increase for every pound of weight saved in the door. The program includes the development of manufacturing processes, fabrication of tooling and component molding and assembly of multiple doors for demonstration of manufacturing rate, cost and suitability for use in a full-scale automotive application.

These door components will endure the same static and dynamic proof tests, as well as Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) -214 side impact testing, as the existing metallic door to validate equality.

To date, the project team has begun manufacture of prototype parts. The main door components are manufactured using both high pressure resin transfer molding (HP-RTM) and liquid compression molding (LCM). These highly automated process technologies, along with suitable resin formulations, enable composites to support high volume automotive production. It is this automated low-cycle time solution that enable composites to become a viable alternative to metals in high rate automotive manufacturing.

TPI would like to recognize the Vehicle Technologies Office within the Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy for support of this program

Automated Dynamics, now a part of Trelleborg Group, will sponsor the New England SAMPE meeting on April 19th, 2018. The meeting will include a company overview presentation and a tour of their new advanced composites facility in Niskayuna, NY.

Automated Dynamics has been in operation for over 30 years and was recently acquired by Trelleborg Group. Automated Dynamics is a global leader in automated composite production, specializing in the manufacturing of advanced composite structures and the development of high-performance automation equipment. Through the use of a true out-of-autoclave (OoA) process, Automated Dynamics brings additive manufacturing to continuous-fiber thermoplastic composite parts, saving weight and improving reliability in today’s most demanding engineering environments. Offering patented Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) technologies and innovative composite solutions, Automated Dynamics has produced hundreds of thousands of composite parts for over 500 clients in 17 countries.

A dinner, followed by a technical overview and tour, will be provided at the Automated Dynamics plant at 2 Commerce Park Drive, Niskayuna NY beginning at 5:30 PM on Thursday, April 19th, 2018. The cost of the meeting is $20 for SAMPE members and free for students. Details on registering for the tour will be provided shortly. Mark your calendars.

37 South Hunt Road, Amesbury MA 01913

ARC Technologies of Amesbury MA, www.arc-tech.com, has announced a new family of dielectric controlled polymeric materials for injection molding, thermoforming and composite applications. The material includes formulations with a wide variety of electrical properties. PP6000 is a low dielectric, low-loss thermoplastic compound with good resistance to moisture and most chemicals. It is ideal for applications at 24 GHz and 77 GHz, including radomes for automotive radar, and can be used as an impedance-matching material or as a dielectric spacer. CA5000 is a highly conductive plastic that provides excellent shielding over a wide frequency range. CA5000 has good temperature resistance and corrosion resistance, and is an ideal material for molding electronic covers and enclosures that can benefit from low cost and design flexibility. PP2000 is a magnetic absorber that provides a balance of mechanical and electrical properties It is ideal for surface current reduction, cavity mode suppression, and attenuating near-field emissions from 1 to 18 GHz. WT-ACAG is a carbon-based absorber that is designed for attenuation in the 10+ GHz range. This product is ideal for lossy enclosures and housings and can be used to reduce/eliminate antenna pattern side lobes and improve performance. All the materials are halogen free, RoHs and REACH compliant.

ARC will host the February 23 New England SAMPE meeting at the new ARC facilities, 37 South Hunt Road, Amesbury MA. Dinner will be provided for a cost of $15, followed by a technical presentation of ARC’s family of dielectric materials and composites, and a tour of the new plant. NOTE: Because of the clearance level at the facility, only US citizens with proof of citizenship (passport) will be allowed in the plant.

2 Industrial Road, Lowell, MA 01851

For design engineers seeking material science solutions to meet highly demanding product performance requirements, AvCarb is the premium supplier of engineered carbon for critical friction, thermal, and electrochemical applications that partners with you to truly understand your business, to deliver optimal solutions. AvCarb products include textiles, papers, and parts creatively engineered with carbon and carbon fiber for performance in critical systems.

AvCarb’s state-of-the art facility houses a number of unique engineering and production capabilities, essential to making products of the highest quality.  AvCarb also makes these facilities available for unique customer requirements for toll processing, or new product development. AvCarb uses a wide variety of coating processes to provide functionality to its carbon-based materials.  Dip, slot-die coating (including multilayer), spray, comma bar, reverse roll and meyer rod on multiple production lines are among the typical techniques used at AvCarb.  Converting equipment including slitters, calenders, sheeters, and hot presses, and die-cutters are also in routine operation. AvCarb’s chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process deposits amorphous pyrolytic carbon (PC) onto carbon substrates including carbon fabrics, papers, and tow.  Uniform PC layers may be applied in thicknesses ranging from nanometers to micrometers. AvCarb’s manufacturing methods include batch and continuous processes.

Wind turbine blade testing is a critical factor in maintaining high levels of reliability and evaluating the latest technological developments in airfoils and materials. Adequate testing will allow wind energy to be more competitive. In addition, blade testing is required as part of turbine certification to meet international design standards including IEC, GL, DNV. Meeting international standards allows developers to mitigate the technical and financial risk of deploying mass-produced wind turbines.

Blade Testing At WTTC

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s (MassCEC) Wind Technology Testing Center (WTTC) offers a full suite of certification tests for turbine blades up to 90 meters in length.  WTTC also offers the latest wind turbine blade testing and prototype development methodologies to help the wind industry deploy the next generation of land-based and offshore wind turbine technologies.

WTTC Experience

The WTTC’s principle technical team includes blade engineers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) trained in blade testing at the current test facility in Colorado.  Expertise and personnel from NREL are playing key roles in commissioning and overseeing the operation of the WTTC. NREL has tested numerous blades ranging in size from 9 to 47 meters over the last 15 years. In addition, WTTC/NREL engineers have previous experience testing blades at leading wind turbine design and manufacturing companies.