Filament Winding
May 07, 2022
by a searcher from Dartmouth College - Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in Milwaukee, WI, USA
Has anyone looked at a filament winding manufacturing company? Do you have any opinions on the market growth or size of the market? Also interested in the competitive landscape - is it highly fragmented? Is filament winding typically a part of a broader suite of manufacturing services?
from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Colorado Springs, CO, USA
Also, really basic winding, like simple tubes, is probably much closer to a commodity than a shop that does custom or highly engineered work. I could see a filament winding shop doing other composites work, like broadgoods layup, parts with and without core, etc. There are also distinctions between 'winding' (simple, typically cylindrical shapes) vs. fiber placement (more complex). Ancillary operations include composite machining, which requires some different skills than metal machining.
That said, there is room for innovation. There are companies doing innovative work in the space. One of the big things that can be improved is predicting properties of the finished parts. Right now I think that is mainly done empirically. Figuring it out analytically would be a big improvement, but that's PhD level work to solve, so depends if you want to be a simple manufacturer or a tech company.
from Oklahoma State University in Tulsa, OK, USA