Web Industries Offers A Wide Range Of Services
Companies developing or using challenging flexible materials trust our precision slitting services for reliable, cost-effective, and scalable formatting for nonwoven specialty films, composites, and plastics. Our innovative slitting solutions are customized to get the most out of your high-value flexible materials. Our PrecisionSlit™ tape technologies define aerospace industry standards for slitting, spooling, and winding prepreg composites. With over 50 slitting lines around the world, we provide key market proximity and capacity.
Our experience spans the breadth of composite material slitting: thermosets, thermoplastics, adhesives, dry fiber, BMI, CMC, and pre-laminated materials.
We are the only AS/EN9100C-certified composite formatting company with the proven ability to simultaneously support multiple major aircraft development programs like the 787, 777X, and A350.
Our unique PrecisionSlit™ slitting technology enables us to format prepreg composite tapes as narrow as 0.125″ (3.2 mm) while exceeding aerospace tolerances. We match tape length, winding patterns, liner materials, and spool sizes to meet our customers’ specific fabrication requirements, providing them with custom-formatted material that streamlines workflow, increases production rates, and reduces overall waste.
Benefits of PrecisionSlit™ Techology include:
- Improved material yields and laydown rates
- Maximized production efficiency and “uptime”
- Ability to evaluate and optimizes the end-to-end process (inputs, processes, final spool configuration) Shorten timeline to production
- Leveraging four-way collaboration on slit product (customer, AFR, material supplier, and Web)Partner with all AFP/ATL manufacturers
- Alignment with raw material manufactures
Ultra Narrow Slitting for Additive Manufacturing capabilities include:
- Slit tape down to 1mm to feed additive manufacturing process
- Aerospace quality in width and surface control
- Adjustability to any width, with any material
- Scale to drive yield and efficiency to meet lower costs for Additive Manufacturing technology
OEM and tiered suppliers look to us for outsourced cutting services that are cost effective and simplify their workflow. With the latest technologies, we offer cutting options for nearly every rolled, sheeted, and plated flexible, semi-rigid, composite, and rigid substrates. Our automated cutting solutions are customized to the material, end-use needs and include cleanroom environments, inline part marking, and multipart kitting. Working in two-, three-, and five-axes, we can also contour chamfered edges and cut other features into the final part. In addition, we provide streamlined supply chain processes that simplify cost modeling and reduce overhead costs.
Laser Cutting
Our laser-cutting technologies achieve highly accurate cutting and marking of composites, textiles, woven substrates, foams, films, polyesters, and polycarbonates to produce a wide range of parts and components in various sizes. This formatting method provides precise multilevel material removal and the elimination of fraying by cauterizing the edges of woven materials.
Knife & Blade Cutting
Web provides a wide range of precision-cutting services, including wheel cutting, fixed knife, oscillating blade, rotating blade, and ultrasound for materials in either sheeted or rolled formats. Our automated processes will cut directly through the material but also offer multi-depth capabilities for stenciling, densification masks, and adhesive applications. We also offer one-pass multilayer cutting for highly efficient production of insulation blankets and ply kits made from laminations.
Water-jet & Ultrasonic Cutting
Web’s automated abrasive and non-abrasive water-jet and ultrasonic systems are equipped with five-axis heads capable of providing high-precision material removal and part shaping that meet or exceed our customers’ tightest tolerances. Working with the hardest polycarbonates as well as the softest of leathers, these systems offer accuracy with multilayer capabilities.
Companies rely on our NADCAP-certified automated ply cutting and ply kitting services to provide proven, cost-effective composite, specialty fabric, and film formatting. Web Industries customized, automated table-cutting processes produce precisely cut plies faster and more consistently than traditional hand-cutting methods. Our advanced shape-nesting in our temperature-, humidity-, and particulate-controlled environments ensures efficient material usage. Plus, our easy-to-order, easy-to-install single-SKU supply solutions eliminate non-value-add work for our customers.
Web’s proprietary PlyScan™ technology labels and sequences the precision-cut plies, providing aerospace-grade quality assurance. Web’s pre-assembled kits are ready to go from our inventory to your factory floor for final production.
In combination with our other process optimization solutions, we also provide a streamlined supply chain that helps reduce overhead costs.
Features Include:
- Automated seaming and inspection
- Wide widths up to 50”
- Huge scrap reduction
- Speedy parent roll and custom “slitting” production processes
- Commercial scalability (vs. hand-seamed bias-ply rolls)
- Advanced shape nesting
- Automated ply labeling/barcoding
- Our proprietary PlyScan®error-proofing system
- RFID-tagged kits
Wide range of flexible materials available:
- Thermoset
- Thermoplastic
- Adhesives
- MLI
- Carbon fiber
- Fiberglass
Multiple cutting technologies
- Drag knife
- Oscillating
- Wheel cutting
- Die cutting
- Laser
- Pneumatic
- Water-jet
Web Industries develops advanced technologies to slit, spool, chop, or pre-form thermoplastics to aerospace-quality levels and scale volumes for automated fabrication processes (AFPs). We match tape length, winding patterns, liner materials, and spool sizes to meet your specific manufacturing requirements, providing custom-formatted materials that streamline fabrication workflow, increase production rates, and reduce overall waste.
Web partners with the world’s leading material manufacturers, major OEMs, and tiered suppliers to develop formatting processes to support thermoplastic composites specific manufacturing.
Composite & Thermoplastic Formats Overview
- Slit tapes for AFP, ATL, AM, and braiding processes (1 mm–2” in width)
- Quasi-Isotropic UD Slit Tape
(45/90 for CCM and ATL processes) - Dried fiber slit tape for AFP/ATL
resin infusion processes - Super roll (edited/spliced for long processing)
PrecisionSlit® tape – 1 mm through 6″ precision tapes for automated fiber placement, automated tape laying, weaving/braiding, additive manufacturing
Precision BiasPly™ – our automated process cuts and seams 0-degree 12″ and 24″ parent materials to produce quasi-isotropic, which are pre-oriented (i.e. 45- and 90-degree 50″-wide parent rolls that can be pre-formatted for custom AFP, ATL, CCM, and hand lay-up manufacturing requirements):
- Automated alignment system
- Flyaway splices
- Automated precision laser/optical
alignment technology - Seaming specifications of 2 mm +/- 1 mm
- Critical data on overlap, with alignment recorded on every weld (over 2,000 welds per roll)
- Meeting the stringent requirement of 100% seam weld measurement and inspection
- Incremental slit widths to improve yield
- Laminate blanks for thermal forming
Chopped Flake – Web’s precision slits and chops TPC material for compression molding. The chopped product is pre-weighed to meet individual part mold requirements. We recycle and chop virgin TPC materials left over from other formatting operations to reduce/eliminate material waste.
Our innovations with these materials continue to promote sustainability in aerospace and support a zero-carbon world.
Chopped materials (new or recycled) include:
- Standard flakes for aerospace-grade compression molded parts
- High-precision flakes for more stringent applications
- Improved yield and recycling at the point of greatest impact
- Utilized TPC or TS trim and pre-cured TS materials
- Untrimmed parent rolls
- Downgraded flakes for the purpose of recycling (any waste stream)
Composite Formatting – Our partners trust us to provide them with preforms ready for downstream manufacturing to reduce the cost and cycle time of fabricating parts. Our automated cutting systems produce precise plies and component structures from composites and other materials, such as adhesive films, aramids, and ceramics. These pieces are then layered, draped, stitched, or autoclaved in house to produce a preform that is ready for additional machining, such as water-jet cutting, or custom kitted and shipped just in time for final fabrication at the customer’s facility.
Web’s assembly and packaging services provide cost-effective outsource manufacturing of final products, components, and sub-components:
- Our process engineers develop customized production solutions that are scalable and efficient at various production volumes.
- Web applies Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing principles to drive down waste and ensure high productivity.
- For hand-assembled items, we utilize a wide range of adhesive bonding options.
- For web-based raw materials, we can mix and match a variety of inline converting services to provide multi-step manufacturing activities in a single pass.
- To ensure materials’ efficient use on the factory floor, we offer customized SpoolKit® packaging solutions, supplying the correct materials to be assembled in the right order to match existing production processes.
Our continued work and expansion of reusable materials, such as cores, spools, and other packaging elements, further our efforts and our customers’ to minimize environmental impact.
To optimize their manufacturing processes, our partners depend on our automated ply cutting and ply kitting services to provide proven, cost-effective outsourced composite, specialty fabric, and film formatting.
With single-SKU supply solutions that are easy to order and install, our customers can eliminate non-value-add make-ready work, freeing personnel and resources to focus on their core business.
Our expert technicians nest ply shapes to maximize yields and minimize waste from high-value materials. Temperature-, humidity-, and particulate-controlled environments protect materials during processing. Exclusive PlyScan™ technology labels and sequences the precision-cut plies, providing aerospace-grade quality assurance that every pre-assembled kit is ready to go from our inventory to your factory floor for final production. Combined with our material and supply chain management solutions, our customers benefit from a streamlined supply chain, simplified cost modeling, and reduced overhead costs.
Web’s printing services offer superior color and image reproduction that can be applied to the widest range of substrates. Our capabilities include water-based flexographic presses that offer a wide range of options for printing and packaging. For nonwovens, papers, and films, we deliver registered high-speed, wide-web flexographic printing in concert with our precision slitting and spooling processes. These in-line capabilities provide efficient production, reducing overall costs.
Cross Ply
- Oriented in multiple layers
- Nip rolling and vacuum table consolidation
- Any thermoset fiber type or adhesive
- Multiple layers consolidated and nipped
2-Ply Lamination
- Erosion film and adhesive
- Riblet film and adhesive
- Surfacing film to structural materials
- Tackifier and fiber
- Poly liner and prepreg
- Resin and metal screens
When production requires custom-designed spooled packages, planetary rolls, and pads, customers depend on our precision spooling and winding capabilities. As the world’s largest and most diverse provider of spooling and traverse winding services, the Web team offers a wider array of spooling heads and configurations than anyone else in the industry. Our latest extra-large format spooler features advanced technology designed for superior handling and tension control while accepting jumbo incoming master rolls to produce oversized finished spools.
Industry leaders turn to our assembly and packaging services for cost-effective assembly and kitting of final products, components, and sub-components. Our process engineers develop customized production solutions that are both scalable and efficient at all volumes. For hand-assembled items, we can leverage a wide range of adhesive bonding options. For web-based raw materials, we can mix and match a variety of in-line converting services to provide multistep manufacturing activities in a single pass, saving you time and money.
Companies developing products that combine valuable or sensitive substrates into highly technical multilayer laminates trust our precision die cutting and registration systems to support the production of complex structures that exceed the most stringent quality requirements.
- Multiple modular lines for slitting, spooling, continuous lamination, and die cutting
- In-line automated inspection and bad-part marking
- Climate-controlled environments
- Customized equipment that drives improved repeatability, tolerances, and yields
- Assembly solutions tailored for program scale and complexity
- Manual, semi-automated, and fully automated options to optimize speed, reliability, unit cost, and capital cost
- In-line inspection and packaging options
- Climate-controlled environments
Web Industries’ AS/EN 9100 D- and NADCAP-certified facilities and exacting quality assurance systems provide controlled receiving, formatting, and shipping.
Industry leading material management, freezer storage, and inventory control systems eliminate the need for you to invest in non-core production infrastructure and labor.
- Just-in-time services
- Out-time tracking life of material
- Rigorous FOD prevention program
- ERP tracking of out-time, shelf-life, and all material transactions
- 100% traceability from raw material to finished kit
- Packaging and kit/ply labels
- Out-times and expiration dates for all raw materials