Automated tape laying and automated fiber placement technologies take a key enabling role in production of today's - and tomorrow's - composite-airframed commercial jets. For most of its history, most of the aerospace industry has taken advantage of carbon-fiber-reinforced composites at great expense: Individually cut prepreg are painstakingly hand layed by highly trained technicians, the best of whom can place about 2.5 lb of material per hour. Only 10 years ago, if a knowledgeable composite aero-structure pro like Spirit AeroSystems Inc.'s (Wichita, Kan.) Terry George (then a Boeing Commercial Airplanes employee) had been told that within a decade, he'd be building the massive nose and front fuselage barrel section of a new all-composite wide-body commercial aircraft fuselage from carbon-fiber reinforced epoxy, the idea of doing so with the prevailing manual technology would have seemed a practical and financial impossibility.
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