Helicon brings automation to high-volume composites manufacturing

Superior composites supply power and stiffness at low weight, however manufacturing them at scale stays sluggish, labor-intensive, and tough to automate. Helicon Industries is constructing automated manufacturing techniques designed to carry composites into high-volume manufacturing, beginning with carbon fiber.

The Los Angeles-based startup has emerged from stealth with $16 million in seed funding, led by AlleyCorp. Helicon goals to chop composite manufacturing lead occasions from six months or extra down to 2 weeks.

Co-founder went from autonomous techniques to automated manufacturing

Edmundo Sanz-Gadea, co-founder and chief expertise officer of Helicon, constructed rockets and drones in his youth in Madrid. That led to a highschool internship on the European Area Company in Paris, adopted by research in aerospace at TU Delft within the Netherlands.

Edmundo Sanz-Gadea. CTO of Helicon

“Conventional aerospace felt like squeezing out that final 1% of effectivity from already extremely optimized techniques. When you take a look at issues like jet engine design or business plane aerodynamics, they’re already fairly near optimum,” Sanz-Gadea advised The Robotic Report. “I bought very within the new wave of robotics and autonomous techniques. So I spent a 12 months on a System Scholar self-driving workforce, the place college students design and construct race vehicles and compete all world wide.”

“TU Delft and MIT mixed forces,” he recalled. “We had been doing a lot of the {hardware} in Delft and numerous the autonomous algorithms at MIT. I used to be bridging the 2 sides. There have been 10 of us working full time, managing a workforce of greater than 100 part-time engineers.”

“It was an important expertise, eye-opening towards autonomy and dealing in a fast-paced workforce,” mentioned Sanz-Gadea. “We had been fortunate to have sponsors like Google, Uber, and Volkswagen.”

He then labored at a startup within the Netherlands on autonomous drones for infrastructure inspections, adopted by a 12 months at ETH Zurich. Sanz-Gadea developed a diffusion coverage to allow an ANYbotics quadruped to do robot-to-human handovers earlier than founding Helicon.

Sanz-Gadea began Helicon with co-founder and CEO Alex Niehaus round a shared imaginative and prescient of constructing a brand new era of extremely automated manufacturing for composites.

Autonomous factories tackle a protection problem

Why did Helicon select to start out with carbon fiber manufacturing?

“Composite manufacturing remains to be a really handbook course of, it’s tough to automate, particularly the manipulation of versatile supplies like carbon-fiber textiles,” defined Sanz-Gadea. “That’s compounded by the heavy regulation round manned aviation and protection packages.”

“Historically, you begin with a mildew for the half you need to make and place the carbon-fiber materials into it,” he added. “Relying on the method, the fabric might already comprise the resin, as with prepreg, or the resin could be launched afterward via processes akin to vacuum infusion or resin switch molding.”

That labor-intensive strategy has labored for the primes like Lockheed or Boeing, as a result of manufacturing volumes are low and the price of every half is excessive, Sanz-Gadea mentioned. However a brand new era of firms in drones, robotics, and aerospace is trying to construct a lot bigger volumes with out giving up the efficiency benefits of composites.

“The mindset is altering from constructing a small variety of extraordinarily optimized techniques to constructing good techniques at a lot bigger scale,” mentioned Sanz-Gadea. “You see that very clearly with drones, nevertheless it’s occurring throughout robotics and different industries too. The problem is determining the right way to manufacture light-weight, high-performance constructions within the lots of of hundreds moderately than the lots of.”

“Most firms are nonetheless shopping for flat carbon-fiber sheets from abroad, slicing them to form, and assembling them with fasteners,” mentioned Sanz-Gadea. “It’s a really inefficient strategy to construct a construction, it creates numerous meeting work, and it makes it a lot more durable to fabricate competitively at scale within the U.S.”

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Helicon preps for mass manufacturing

Helicon is gearing up for manufacturing because it strikes to a 36,000 sq. ft. (3,344.5 sq. m) house in Torrance, Calif. From the supplies it makes use of to the gear and processes on the manufacturing unit ground, the corporate is constructing every part round automation and high-volume manufacturing, Sanz-Gadea famous.

“We’re centered on ease of automation and on high-volume manufacturing strategies,” he mentioned. “The objective is to make use of processes that may be automated rather more simply and run with a lot sooner cycle occasions — underneath quarter-hour, in contrast with hours for conventional layup and autoclave processes.”

“The supplies and processes we’re utilizing are additionally a lot simpler to automate,” mentioned Sanz-Gadea. “You possibly can design the method so a robotic can reliably choose the fabric, place it, take away the completed half, after which deal with downstream steps like trimming and high quality management.”

“There’s numerous demand,” he mentioned. “The problem firms face is they will sometimes do a sure variety of prototypes in-house — small manufacturing runs of 10 to 100 items manually — however once they win a contract for hundreds, they will’t rent sufficient folks.”

“For robotics, we don’t want large industrial arms,” Sanz-Gadea mentioned. “The vital half is designing the entire cell round repeatability and pace.”

The corporate can also be working carefully with a number of materials suppliers to help manufacturing at a lot bigger volumes. “There’s probably not a scarcity of carbon fiber itself,” mentioned Sanz-Gadea. “The bottleneck is the power to show that materials into completed elements at scale domestically.”

Sanz-Gadea sees buyer base for composites past aerospace

Helicon is working towards the certifications wanted to serve demanding aerospace and protection packages, whereas additionally seeing curiosity from robotics, logistics, maritime, and different industries the place light-weight, high-performance constructions matter.

“Most robotic techniques at the moment are constituted of aluminum, and our supplies supply larger stiffness at 40% decrease weight,” he mentioned. “That interprets into longer battery life, smaller actuators, or larger payload capability. We see an enormous alternative as robotics strikes towards larger-scale manufacturing throughout humanoids and cell robots.”

The stiffness-to-weight ratio of carbon fiber is considerably higher than that of metals and plastics, however manufacturing it at scale remains to be tough.

“Composites at the moment are a bit like metals earlier than fashionable industrialization,” mentioned Sanz-Gadea. “The fabric properties are distinctive, however the manufacturing infrastructure has not caught up. Metal solely turned transformative as soon as firms like Carnegie and Bethlehem Metal discovered the right way to produce it reliably and at large scale.”

“Carbon fiber has already confirmed itself in elite purposes like System 1, fighter jets, and spacecraft,” he defined. “The problem now’s bringing those self same efficiency benefits into merchandise made in a lot bigger volumes. That’s what we’re centered on.”

Helicon imaginative and prescient attracts funding to scale

Supply: Helicon

Sanz-Gadea and co-founder and CEO Alex Niehaus began Helicon round a broader objective of “reindustrializing the West.” The corporate started in London, the place they centered on creating the expertise, constructing provider relationships, and establishing relationships with potential prospects.

They later hung out in San Francisco assembly buyers, prospects, and different folks throughout the superior manufacturing ecosystem, earlier than selecting Los Angeles as the bottom for Helicon’s manufacturing operations.

“A number of the early work was about constructing the correct relationships across the firm,” Sanz-Gadea mentioned. “We hung out with prospects, materials suppliers, producers, and folks throughout aerospace, protection, robotics, and superior manufacturing to know the place the strongest wants had been.”

Helicon initially raised capital from angel buyers earlier than bringing in institutional buyers. The oversubscribed spherical allowed the founders to be selective concerning the companions they introduced onto the cap desk.

Sanz-Gadea mentioned Brannon Jones, a principal on AlleyCorp’s deep-tech workforce, stood out due to his background in SpaceX and superior manufacturing. “He understood what we had been making an attempt to construct instantly,” Sanz-Gadea mentioned. “He flew from New York to San Francisco the following day to satisfy us.”

Now, Helicon is constructing out its manufacturing capabilities in Los Angeles and hiring throughout mechanical and structural engineering, software program, robotics, manufacturing, and operations.

“The ambition is far larger than making one kind of carbon-fiber half,” Sanz-Gadea mentioned. “We need to construct the manufacturing capability to provide superior composites at an actual industrial scale.”

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