Rheden- 2025

Cato Composites participating in AeroFusion

 The AeroFusion consortium partners

The consortium partners form a unique liaison on an academic (SAM XL / TU Delft) and industrial (Airbus/Cato Composites/Toray Advanced Composites) level together covering the process triangle between design (Airbus), manufacturing (Cato Composites & SAM XL) and materials (Toray Advanced Composites).

These partners are familiar players in the Dutch composite ecosystem and collaborate in different settings in – not limited to – other national growth fund projects.

 The consortium will enable the use of thermoplastic composites (TPC) and reduce the weight of next generation aircraft. The development of this knowledge is key in understanding the  assembly of lightweight aircraft parts and will therefore make it possible to extrapolate the knowledge to actual aircraft structures after this project finishes.

 The potential of continuous ultrasonic welding for TPC is very high: compared to other welding techniques, high speeds of about a factor ten higher compared to current technologies can be achieved with CUW, something that is necessary for the high-volume production of aircraft.

 Cato Composites role will be to support engineering the components, engineer the manufacturing tooling and to provide thermoformed or stamped thermoplastic composites parts for SAM XL to continuously weld using its ultrasonic welding technology. Cato's extensive experience with this technology makes them well-suited for this task.

 Cato Composites (Rheden, NL) is a company supporting clients with their need for manufacturing components using thermoplastic composites. Cato’s aim is to contribute to making product lower weight, using biobased and recycled materials and to enable applications generating or storing renewable energy.

 Bram Jongbloed of SAM XL explaining the US welding technology