STAGE 01
Design & tooling
Part design, DFM review, laminate definition and mold design. Aluminum tooling for short runs, steel for higher volumes, both cut in house — which keeps tool revisions to a matter of days.
Advanced composite & additive manufacturing
From a drawing to a part you can qualify.
Design, tooling, process development and production under one roof — compression molding, resin infusion, RTM, filament winding and fiber placement, in matrices from epoxy through thermoplastic polyimide. Where the equipment to run a process does not exist commercially, we design and build it.
TPIPEEKLM PAEKPEIBMIPOLYIMIDECYANATE ESTERPROXXIMAPPSEPOXY
What we do
Four stages, one supplier
Composite programs lose most of their schedule at the handoffs between design, tooling and production. All four stages are held here, so the process qualified on the prototype is the process that runs in production.
STAGE 02
Process development
Resin and fiber selection, layup schedules and cure cycle development, with mechanical testing in house so trials are judged here rather than in someone else's queue. Parameters are documented, so the process is transferable rather than resident in one operator.
STAGE 03
Prototyping & low volume
First articles, functional prototypes and short production runs. Compression molded components in lead times from 10 days.
STAGE 04
Production
Series production runs here, on the equipment that made the prototype, with production tooling and documented parameters delivered as part of the program. Where rate matters, RTM in Proxxima cycles under five minutes and compression molding at 2 to 20, with TFP preforms and robotic handling to take labour out of the cell.
Processes
Eight routes to a finished part
Volume, tolerance, surface requirement and tooling budget constrain the choice before a laminate is drawn, and reversing that decision late is expensive.
Design
DFM, tool design and laminate definition.
Resin infusion
Large structures, low counts, one tooled surface.
RTM
Both surfaces off tool, controlled wall thickness. Under 5 min cycles in Proxxima.
Compression molding
Core process. High rate, high service temperature.
Filament winding
Pressure vessels, tubes, shafts, and rotor overwrap to 1,000 N.
Fiber placement
Tow laid to a defined path on our own system, primarily thermoplastic.
Tooling & kitting
Infusion tooling, compression molds, RTM tools, mandrels, jigs and fixtures; CNC ply cutting.
CNC machining
Metal and composite. Titanium, aluminum, copper, nickel, tool steel, stainless; 3 and 4 axis to 65″ × 100″ × 12″.
Specialty — rotor overwrap
High-tension winding to 1,000 N
Roughly an order of magnitude above general-purpose winding tension, so preload survives both centrifugal load and expansion mismatch at operating temperature. Wound in IM10 and T1100 class fiber, with over 300 m/s tip speed demonstrated.
TENSION
1,000 N
Sufficient to retain interference at operating speed and temperature.
SERVICE
> 200 °C
Continuous service, to 260 °C in thermoplastic polyimide.
MATRIX
TPI & BMI at the top
High-temperature epoxy towpreg where cost governs, up to TPI and BMI. Which suits a given rotor depends on the part.
APPLICATIONS
Typical
High-speed PM motor rotors, flywheel energy storage, turbomachinery, downhole motors, centrifuge and separator rotors.
Equipment, robotics & automation
We build the machines, and the cells around them
Commercial winders top out well short of 1,000 N, so ours were designed and built here — payout, tension control, motion and the cell around them, as were our fiber placement system and the metered injection unit used for RTM. That capability is also offered on its own.
Our own equipment
Filament winders, high-tension winding cells, our fiber placement system and the metered resin injection unit for RTM. Process development and machine design proceed together rather than across a supplier interface.
Robotic processing
Cells for placement, winding, trimming, drilling, inspection and part handling, specified and programmed against the process they serve. Composite automation is a motion problem and a materials problem at once, and both sit in the same building here.
Instrumented
Temperature tracked at the process point, resin bath and mandrel; cameras on the tow in transit for frays and breaks as well as where it lands. Closed-loop, so the machine corrects during the layup rather than reporting a defect after it.
Built to specification
Where a process needs winding equipment, an automated cell or a test frame that is not available commercially, we design, build and deliver it. A requirement outside catalog range constrains the machine, not the part.
Materials & envelope
What we can run, and how big
- Thermoset matrices
- Polyolefin (Proxxima), epoxy, phenolic, benzoxazine, cyanate ester, BMI, polyimide
- Thermoplastic matrices
- PA6 and PA12 at the low-temperature end; PPS, PEI, PES, PEEK and LM PAEK as the working defaults; TPI at the top
- Fiber placement
- Our own system, primarily thermoplastic; tailored fiber placement leveraged for directional preforms
- Reinforcement
- Carbon in standard, intermediate and high modulus; glass, aramid and ceramic — all standard forms
- Machining
- 3 and 4 axis, to 65″ × 100″ × 12″; billet carbon to 6″ thick
- Metals
- Titanium, aluminum, copper, pure nickel, tool steel and stainless; metallic inserts cut in house
- Tooling & kitting
- Infusion, compression and RTM tools, mandrels, jigs and fixtures; CNC ply cutting in fabric and prepreg
- Presses & ovens
- Multiple presses, platens to 30″ × 30″; presses and ovens both to 450 °C
Industries
Where our parts end up
Aerospace & defense
PEEK, LM PAEK, BMI and epoxy structure, prototype through low rate, including defense program work.
Uncrewed systems
Complete airframes for small uncrewed aircraft, through layup and assembly — and the rate processes to carry a program from prototype counts into production.
Energy, oil & gas
Corrosion-resistant and high-temperature components for downhole, line and facility service, plus high-speed rotors.
Industrial
Rollers, shafts, pressure vessels and machined composite components for process equipment.
Emerging demand
Where composite volume is going next
The growth in composite consumption over the next decade is not in the applications that established the industry. It is in programs where a metal part has become the limiting component — too heavy to accelerate, too conductive, too unstable dimensionally, or unable to hold property at the temperature the system now runs at. We already ship into all six of the sectors below, and into fusion, defense and hypersonic work alongside them.
Robotics & automation
Arm structure, links and end effectors, where distal mass sets the ceiling on cycle rate and near-zero axial expansion holds position as a cell warms through a shift. Steered fiber runs material around joint cutouts rather than through them.
Semiconductor & precision equipment
Wafer-handling end effectors, metrology stages and gantries. High-modulus carbon in PEEK, LM PAEK or cyanate ester gives specific stiffness, low expansion, low outgassing and vacuum service together — a combination neither metals nor filled plastics reach.
Electrification & high-speed machines
Rotor retention sleeves and flywheel rims. The sleeve is what permits the speed, and winding tension to 1,000 N in matrices rated above 200 °C is the enabling capability rather than a refinement of it.
Hydrogen & compressed gas
Type IV and Type V vessels, and machined electrolyzer cell plates in pure nickel. Cycle life turns on winding parameters being controlled and recorded rather than nominally specified.
Advanced air mobility
Structure sitting directly against motors, inverters and packs, holding load at temperatures airframes did not previously see. RTM in Proxxima cycles under five minutes and compression molding at 2 to 20, with TFP preforms and robotic handling on top.
Space & orbital systems
Cyanate ester and toughened epoxy on high-modulus carbon remain the qualified baseline, selected against ASTM E595 outgassing limits. Alongside them we are pushing thermoplastic structure: the aromatic PAEK backbone puts PEEK and LM PAEK among the most radiation-stable thermoplastics available, they take up almost no moisture, and a tough matrix resists the microcracking deep thermal cycling drives through brittle laminates. Joints weld rather than bond, taking adhesive mass and outgassing out of the assembly. Newer systems are working through qualification behind both.
Contact
Send us the part
A STEP file and an approximate annual volume are enough to begin. Where no model exists, geometry and load cases will do — a good share of our work starts before a drawing is released.
- info@krmn3d.com
- Address
- 1900 W Peterson Ave
Chicago, IL 60660 - Hours
- Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm