Carbon Marine is building composite boats 60% faster.

To dramatically shrink production times and costs, Carbon Marine, a pioneering the design and manufacture of carbon fiber powerboats, made the transition to digital patterning with ExactFlat.  They estimate that this change reduced their production cycle from roughly 3 months to just 3 weeks.

According to Production Manager Drew Davidson, “Using ExactFlat in conjunction with a few other major process changes made the difference.  Our results and the time savings were way better than we expected.  And as we keep doing things digitally, we’re just going to be more and more efficient.  I think that we can easily get the whole process down to about two and a half weeks.”

Eliminating Fit Testing

In order to achieve this dramatic reduction in production cycle time, the team at Carbon Marine relied on software and integration services provided by the experts at ExactFlat.   One key advantage of the transition to ExactFlat came in the time savings for ply definition and fit testing.

“Getting the patterns, ply layup, and fiber orientation right is incredibly important.  That’s where the strength comes from.  It’s also the hardest and most time-consuming part of the job.  First, we’d spend weeks just working out the rough patterns.  Then we’d cut a few pieces and do a lot of trimming back or changing, pulling in and pulling out, to remove things like wrinkles in the corners or gaps between pieces.”

With ExactFlat the team is now able to convert the 3D design into 2D pattern pieces in minutes.  Preparing the design for flattening only requires a few tasks:

• Accessing the 3D model and “hiding” any surfaces or components that are not flattened

• Creating a Finite Element Mesh representation of the surfaces

• Cutting and combining the surfaces into 3D pieces

• Generating off-set surfaces to form the individual ply layers

Once the 3D pieces and plys are defined, the model is ready for flattening.

Creating accurate patterns on the first try

“While this part of the process used to cause us the most headaches, it turned out to be the easiest step with ExactFlat.”  states Davison. For 3D to 2D flattening, users assign material properties and grain direction to the 3D pieces.  Next the software unfolds the pieces into 2D patterns.  Advanced algorithms including the bias metric tools within ExactFlat ensure precise simulation of the actual material behavior.

In addition to the speed of flattening and strain optimization, the key advantage of the process was the accuracy of the patterns. “If I had to sum it up into a word it would be ‘confidence.’”   Says Davidson.  “We build the boats using pattern templates.  We have to be absolutely sure that the templates are right.  This is huge because when you’re laying down those big pieces, I mean one cosmetic layer alone can be 30 feet of pretty expensive material, you can’t afford to get that wrong.” 

Making the decision to transition to digital patterning.

Once they made the decision to close the automation gaps between design and production, Carbon Marine had their digital patterning process up and running in less than 30 days.  They’re already seeing 60% production cycle time and associated cost reductions after just one project. Give us a call to learn more and to see how you can bring the benefits of digital to your business.  Just click on the link below to schedule a time to speak with one of our experts.