Newsletter July

Our partnership with GFM, SAMBA in Augsburg, case study tank reinforcements, and about being cevo

Dear friends of Fiber Patch Placement,

Cevotec is operating in full swing at the beginning of the 3rd quarter. Last week, we’ve commissioned a SAMBA Step system at the research facility Materials Resource Management (MRM) located at Augsburg Innovationspark and we look forward to further collaboration. Our Application Development Team completed our very own full-scale demonstrator of a H2 tank dome reinforcement. These reinforcements present a more-than-convincing business case to manufacturers: the material savings recoup the necessary technology investment already in the first year of production!

We also did a pulse-check with our team on the Cevotec mission and values – learn how “be cevo” represents our core values that guide our collaboration.

And I’m proud to announce the next growth step for Cevotec, as we welcome the Austrian custom machine builder GFM GmbH as new partner and shareholder! GFM shares our vision to empower manufacturers to build complex composites in high volume and quality, and supports us with more than 75 years of experience in high-tech machinery. Along with the partnership, also our management team continues to adapt and grow. And our customers can look forward to even more innovations for fully automated composites production!

Your

Thorsten Groene

CEO & Co-Founder Cevotec
Your Cevotec-Team

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Contact
+49 89 2314 165 0
advantages@cevotec.com

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Company news

Welcome GFM as new partner and shareholder, changes in the management team

We are proud to announce the next growth step for Cevotec and welcome the Austrian custom machine builder GFM GmbH as new partner and shareholder! GFM shares our vision to empower manufacturers to build complex composites in high volume and quality, and supports us with more than 75 years of experience in high-tech machinery. Along with the partnership, also our management team continues to adapt and grow. Felix Michl, Co-Founder and CTO, steps down from his active CTO role and continues to support Cevotec in an advisory role going forward. Dr. Florian Lenz, joining Cevotec as Technical Director from September onwards, will expand the management team with more than 15 years of experience in composites. We are looking forward to the new collaborations!

Now a large gripper can apply an A4-sized patch gently and precisely on a highly curved surface. Based on the curvature of the surface, the best contact curve is automatically calculated by the FPP-specific ARTIST STUDIO software. This reliably prevents placement defects.

Read more

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Customer

SAMBA Step system to extend research opportunities for Materials Resource Management in Augsburg
Two research organizations have joined forces for research projects focusing on patch-based fiber lay-up: The Institute of Materials Resource Management (MRM), Augsburg University, with focus on ceramic fiber composites and data-driven computational materials science, and the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Augsburg University of Applied Sciences.

The technological backbone of the joint research focused on AI and new materials is a SAMBA Step system from Cevotec based on Fiber Patch Placement (FPP) technology. SAMBA Step systems with their flexible degree of automation are explicitly designed for prototyping and product development in R&D departments, institutes and universities. The systems feature individual robot configurations and are very flexible regarding the materials processed. They can additionally be equipped with a variety of sensors to monitor the production process. The MRM Team is currently planning an extension of the SAMBA Step system with 12 individual sensors that feed real-time data to an AI-based analysis engine.

Read more

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Application

Case study dome reinforcements: 15% weight and cost improvements of H2 composite tanks
Composite pressure vessels are the key storage system for hydrogen-powered mobility. Maintaining high pressure of up to 700 bars, the cylindrical tanks store the hydrogen used in fuel cell-powered electric vehicles like trucks, busses, trains and passenger cars. The main cost driver of the tanks is the carbon fiber material itself, representing over 50% of the total cost. Cevotec has developed an industrial solution that, in combination with the established filament winding process, improves the material efficiency and reduces the weight of a tank by 15% while achieving equivalent mechanical properties. This translates into a convincing business case for manufacturers with a payback period of just under 12 months of production.

Read more

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Insights into dome reinforcement technology

Driven by the rise of H2-powered mobility, the demand for carbon fibers for composite pressure vessels is expected to grow exponentially in the next decade, running a real risk of carbon fiber supply shortage for climate-critical H2 mobility applications. Therefore, we’ve decided to share our insights into the industrial production of composite vessel dome reinforcements and created an in-depth whitepaper along with video footage from our demonstrator production.

Spoiler alert: reinforcing the domes of pressure vessels yields more than just 15% material & weight improvements. It also speeds up the production cycle by 20%, increases the storage efficiency of tanks of by more than 10%, and finally provides a very attractive 12 month payback period for a series production set-up.

Download case study & presentation

We are also planning a webinar on the topic in September, including experts from the industry – more information to come soon!

You don’t want to wait? Contact us now to schedule a personal meeting or call!

Schedule consultation

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Company news

be cevo – our mission and values

Earlier this year, our team did a pulse-check on our mission and values. Over a multi-week process, we asked ourselves critical questions: How do we want to work together? What do we value in our collaborations – internally as well as with customers, suppliers and business partners?

We developed clear answers serving as cultural cornerstones: curiosity drives our activities, and we strive to exceed the expectations of our customers and business partners. In our collaboration, we truly value each other and work with one passion to create a better future. In short:

We also reconfirmed our mission that we are following from day 1:

Enabling manufacturers to produce complex composites in high volume and superior quality!

Read more

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Events

See you around?

Events and business trips in early summer still had to be virtual. Nevertheless, we toured the world! Virtual business trips brought us in contact with North American, Brazilian and Japanese composite industry and gave us the chance to better understand the challenges and requirements of local composite manufacturers.

Also during World Composites Week (26.-27.5.) and JEC Composites CONNECT (1.-3.6.), virtual networking translated into new business relationships. Further highlights of the season were Composites Industrial Revolution Conference (4.-6.5.) and Composites World Hydrogen Tech Day (18.5.), where we presented our H2 tank reinforcement solution to an extremely interested audience.

After a short summer event break, we will be back in fall with our own H2 tank webinar and really look forward to meet personally you again at the following tradeshows and events:

ICS International Composites Summit
September 8 – 9, 2021
London, UK
Booth G3

International Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Expo
September 29 – October 1, 2021
Tokyo Big Sight, Japan
with our partner Fuji Industries

CAMX 2021
October 19 – 21, 2021
Dallas, Texas
Booth W52

Aerospace & Defense Meetings Tel Aviv
November 2 – 3, 2021
Tel Aviv, Israel

Aerodef Manufacturing
November 16 – 18, 2021
Long Beach Convention Center, CA
with our partner Composite Automation

Composites Meetings Nantes
November 17 – 18, 2021
Nantes, France

Aerospace & Defense Meetings Torino
November 30 – December 2, 2021
Torino, Italy

Aviation Forum
December 7 – 8, 2021
Hamburg, Germany

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Recently released

Check out our blog to read about the latest FPP developments. And visit our download area to get your copy of our case study on H2 tank dome reinforcements, or to get a glimpse of the production process from our video footage

Download case study & presentation

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Thank you for spending some time with us

This time the cevoNews are more exciting than ever! Stay in touch with us and have a both productive and relaxing summer!

Your Cevotec-Team

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