Quickstep

Following its listing on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2005, it moved to its Coogee facility to focus on developing the out-of-autoclave technology for commercial use. In doing so, the company decided to bring in some of the leading experts in the field of composites, while it also established a North American Centre of Excellence based in Dayton, Ohio and Ottobrun, Germany to be closer to the main manufacturing centres in the US and Europe. These centres are also involved in a number of paid research projects for organisations including the US Department of Defense and EADS.

As well as the development of the out-of-autoclave method, Quickstep also made the strategic decision to establish its own composite manufacturing operation at its headquarters in WA. “The board made the decision in 2007 that we were actually going to establish a sizable production plant using industry plant and equipment and we started our headhunting process,” said Graham. “We pulled in people from Airbus and Germany. They’re mostly Europeans in this facility, but we’ve pulled in the best of them. They of course arrive here and then they know who to pull in next.”

Indeed, Quickstep has had great success in recruiting a number of composite experts from Europe particularly, with many of its senior technical staff coming from leading aerospace companies such as EADS, Thales and Airbus. This includes CEO Philippe Odouard, who was appointed to the position last year, while Graham himself was a co-founder of composite general aviation manufacturer Eagle Aircraft.

As such, Quickstep now has a world-class AS9100 certified aerospace parts facility, and is chasing major contracts with defence and aerospace OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers to produce advanced composite parts, particularly complex structures which are a challenge for other producers in lower cost countries.

Naturally, building up such facilities around the world has been cheap, but Quickstep has received financial backing come from a number of quarters. Most recently UAE based trading and investment company Al Farida, which has made available a $10 million convertible loan facility, which is available in $2 million tranches. Under the terms of the agreement, Al Farida could choose to convert the total amount of the facility, it would give it an approximately 20 per cent stake in the company.

Along the way, the company has also been involved in partnerships with leading aerospace and defence companies including Sikorsky, Eurocopter, Airbus, EDAG Australia and BAE Systems for both manufacturing work and development of the Quickstep process.

The Quickstep process

A major part of the company’s operations has been the development and commercialisation of its patented out-of-autoclave composite curing processes.

Traditionally, composites are made of fibres and impregnated with resin. The composites are then placed into an autoclave, which heats the resin and allows it to cure, creating a part which in most cases is stronger than metal, while weighing much less than metal.

With the Quickstep method, the autoclave is replaced with a gloycol-type fluid held in bladders, which is 25 times more efficient at transferring heat than the gasses in an autoclave. As such, using the fluid approach allows for rapid heating and cooling, cutting down significant time in the ramp up and pull down time.

“Quickstep is a fluid. It’s in two bladders so you put the tool in, close the bladders down and they’re right against the fluid. We can transfer energy into that fluid and into that tool at an enormous rate that simply gas can’t do,” said Graham.

“Literally, the way we see Quickstep is we’ve invented a new oven. Some things don’t cook as well in it because they’re designed to cook in other ovens. We can often adjust the process to meet the requirements but it just takes a long time. Other things we can cook to perfection in extroadinary ways that would never have been done in an autoclave.”

In particular, the process is useful for curing thick pieces of composite laminate, variable thickness parts or unusual shapes, as it can allow for a more even resin set through the part, helping to improve strength and lower the risk of delamination. In most cases, these can be challenging to do in an autoclave as it requires precise temperature controls, often with long ramp ups and cool down periods.

Practically speaking, the method could lead to the development of new high-strength composite structural parts, such as wing spars, which have been challenging to produce using autoclaves.

However, Graham says that the Quickstep method is not designed to replace autoclaves completely. “Quickstep in the aerospace industry faces the fact that we’ve got this fabulous round process with a square thing that we have to put into it sometimes,” he said. “So we’ve got fibre reinforced resins designed for autoclaves, which have worked in autoclaves for 20 years. Put them in the Quickstep process and we have to mollycoddle them all over the place to bring it up, cook it for its long cycle and pull it down and we can maybe reduce the time by 30-50 per cent if we’re lucky.

“If it doesn’t have the challenging twists or the cores which we have our advantage in, then that’s Autoclave country. Autoclaves are going to be around for a long time because it can cook all these large volume parts well, but where it can’t is where Quickstep will come in.

“With Quickstep we can put the temperature up so quickly that we can actually cure right through it very, very quickly and we can cure the whole thing. We can do that with 300 strands with 100 at the other end – that is radical.”

The Quickstep method is also being used to demonstrate new possibilities with composites, such as being able to meld two pieces of composite together. In the long term, this could replace the need to use fasteners in some aerospace parts.

“With Quickstep, we can do what we call quick stop. We can ramp it up, stop a section of it so that it’s all sticky then add another part to it, cure it again and get integrated composite parts. That’s pretty radical, and we don’t expect to see them on aircraft for some time,” said Graham.

The method has been successfully proving its advantages to the US Department of Defence, EADS and Airbus. The most advanced project of the Quickstep method is with Composites Technology Research Malaysia (CTRM), which is the fifth largest supplier of composites to Airbus. Together, the two companies are working to fast-track an evaluation and certification of the method during the last quarter of this year, with a view to introducing it to CTRM’s production facility in Melaka.

“CTRM have said, ‘We’ve got this part for the A350 which has some idiosyncrasies to it, and we’d like to be able to produce it better’,” said Graham.

“With CTRM, we see that as important, it’s a part that goes on the A350 and that means to us that we’re getting into Airbus. They’ve has basically anointed the program and they’ve asked CTRM to talk with us and they were pleased to do that. Now we’re working with CTRM and Airbus is watching

“So we will see more CTRM-type projects coming through probably with the primes. They’ll be looking for reducing costs and hopefully we’ll be seeing more of these spar kind of projects coming through which are looking at overcoming technical problems,” said Graham.

For companies such as CTRM, it is hoped that the Quickstep method will allow them to gain competitive capabilities for complex composite work, which is increasingly needed in a world where China and India are set to become larger players. “These players that need to compete with China need to work out methods like Quickstep and others to have an advantage that China doesn’t,” said Graham.

The technology also has potential application to a number of other industries, with some of the biggest promise coming from the automotive industry. “The process is a curing methodology and what you put in it and what sorts of resins depends on what industry,” Quickstep director Deryck Graham said when Australian Aviation visited the company in early September. “It’s not like an autoclave which is pretty much fixed to long ramp-ups and long cool-downs. Quickstep can do pretty radical things, so it does span industries in that regard.”

Manufacturing

As well as the development of the Quickstep method, the company has also invested millions of dollars into building a world-class, 4000m2 composites manufacturing facility in WA, and is currently bidding on contracts to produce parts on behalf of OEMs and tier 1 suppliers in the aerospace and defence sectors.

Earlier this year, the company installed three autoclaves for conventional composite production, as well as a Breton 5-axis milling machine. It also has a level three non destructive testing unit, laser tracking equipment and a full suite of CATIA software. Naturally, it also has a Quickstep plant and system setup to produce parts using that method.

The focus of the facility is on producing specialty composite components, either through Build to Print or Build to Specification contracts, which tend to be long term. “We’ve got this enormous facility here with very little business in it, and that’s not an accident – that’s exactly what we’ve planned,” explained Graham. “In this industry, it takes 12-18 months at a screaming pace to put a big aerospace project into place. However, once it comes into place they are decade long programs.”

Establishing and running a quality certified facility was something which required a great deal of knowledge, so Quickstep embarked on a major talent search for a number of its key managers, and was successful in recruiting a number of high level composites specialists who had experience in building up facilities.“We transplanted expertise from Europe straight into here who knew how to turnkey a facility well,” said Graham.

While setting up the facility has been an expensive exercise, the equipment and the expertise of its staff has meant that it now has a world-class facility capable of meeting the needs of a number of major clients. “The kit that we’ve got is capable of doing about 80 per cent of composite requirements on commercial aircraft. Anything outside of that is going to mean bigger autoclaves,” said Graham.

And while supplying composite parts to aircraft manufacturers is a global business, Graham says that the company is not aiming to compete against lower cost countries. “We’re not trying to compete against CTRM, China, India and stuff like that doesn’t interest us. If it’s a dumb build to print part we won’t bid on it. But if it’s a challenging build to print part, a complex part, we’re into it.”

Once the right contracts are in place, Graham expects other businesses supporting its composite manufacturing to become a feature of the industry in WA. “We can absolutely create an aerospace cluster here wrapped around composites, whereas we couldn’t compete with a metal aerospace cluster,” he said.

To do so though will require an increase in skilled workers with the experience in composites, which it has done through specialist recruitment overseas. “We’ve got to have that skeleton structure which is the expertise. We can’t be here creating expertise. They then educate and train those that are going to be operating underneath it.”

While composites are gaining ground in a number of industries, Graham says that the focus of Quickstep’s Coogee facility is on aerospace and defence. “It’s a challenge because we do get everything coming through the door – from bikes to composite desks, to radical mining equipment and extraordinary wind generation plants. We look at all of it, but unless it’s a volume, high end, and high production quality it doesn’t really interest us.”

Currently, the WA headquarters is expected to be its only manufacturing facility, but Graham says that the company would not turn down other opportunities elsewhere, should the market dictate it. “If Dayton turned around and said that they’ve developed the Quickstep process for the DoD, they love it, they want it built in America and the County say they want to build it here, then we would say OK.”

Outloook

With Boeing and Airbus demonstrating that the future of aerospace is in composite aircraft, Graham is confident about Quickstep’s future. “The industry is growing at what one group says is 20 per cent per annum so it’s a great industry to be in, yet its only got a handful of experts all around the world who can run it,” he said. “That’s why we’ve made what really although it may be a bold decision, albeit an extremely well considered one, to put all this money in this industry which is growing at 20 per cent per annum.”

To make the most of those growing opportunities, the company is constantly in talks with a number of major players within the aerospace and defence markets. The company confirmed recently that it has been involved in talks with Lockheed Martin to produce some components for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, although it remains understandably tight-lipped on the progress and scope of its potential involvement with the program.

Graham says that while the company will focus its manufacturing activity on the aerospace sector, it is excited by the possibilities of leveraging the Quickstep method across other industries, particularly the automotive industry for which it has received a Climate Ready grant from the federal government. Nevertheless, Graham says that any move into the automotive industry is likely to be in partnership with another company.

Quickstep is also working on a number of projects with the US Department of Defence, including a number which are currently classified. It has also expressed major interest in a number of Australian defence projects set forth in the most recent Defence Capability Plan.

All going well, the company is planning for some major expansion, “We expect to take our workforce here from currently 25 in this facility and 45 worldwide, and go to 190 over the next two years, pending contracts and it could go as high as 470 in the next five years,” said Graham.