TPI Composites (TPI) has unveiled a collaborative initiative with the University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Center (ASCC) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory aimed at harnessing 3D printing technology for wind turbine tooling production.
The project's objective is to explore how innovative technologies can enable faster, more cost-effective manufacturing of large modular wind blade tooling.
The ASCC’s Composite Center’s Ingersoll MasterPrint, a sizeable polymer 3D printer, is capable of printing modular wind blade tooling at a rate of 500lb/hour, with segments measuring up to 18.3m long x 6.7m wide x 3.0m high. Equipped with a 5-axis machining head, the printer achieves precision of 5 mil, facilitating the joining of tooling segments to maintain vacuum integrity and meet the dimensional accuracy requirements of wind blade manufacturing.
As part of the project, the tooling will incorporate 3D-printed heating elements using coextruded resistive wire to achieve uniform mold temperatures within 5°C and heating rates of 0.5°C per minute. TPI will utilise a section of full-scale tooling to fabricate actual composite components from the printed tooling assembly, composed of assembled modules. The demonstration of this technology is expected to facilitate lower-cost transportation and rapid assembly of multi-megawatt scale wind blade molding systems globally.
