APPLICATIONS -- Low-rate layup tools made cost-effective with high-density polyurethane foam blocks

摘要

Nemesis Air Racing (Oro Valley, Ariz.) is an air racing team and kit-plane company owned and operated by Ion and Patricia Sharp. Formerly a composites engineer at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works (Palm-dale, Calif.), Ion Sharp is a legendary air racer.- He won the Reno Air Racing National Championships nine consecutive times in a tiny International Formula 1 racing aircraft, dubbed Nemesis, which he and his team developed and fabricated in the early 1990s. The most successful aircraft in air-racing history, the original Nemesis is on display in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (Washington, D.C.). When Sharp decided to build a larger composite racer, the Nemesis NXT, an unexpected rule change mandated that each participating aircraft had to be available for purchase as a kit. Fortunately, the Nemesis name ensured that the required five kits were quickly sold. Sharp and his team were then faced with producing the carbon fiber/epoxy composite kit elements from CAD file data.