:: Reinhold ::

In May 1994, Reinhold acquired CompositAir from SP Systems, Inc. CompositAir is a manufacturer of composite seatbacks and other seating components for commercial transport aircraft. CompositAir has been in continuous production of composite components for aircraft interiors since 1980 with over 800,000 parts flying on commercial airliners.

Our composites parts are made of epoxy, phenolic, or other resin systems, reinforced with carbon and fiberglass fibers. These raw materials are molded into the complex shapes required by today's feature-packed commercial aircraft seats. The designs of these components have been co-engineered with the major airline seat manufacturers.

CompositAir relies on its proprietary expertise to develop the lowest-cost process to manufacture a shaped composite part while meeting all the structural and aesthetic requirements as specified by our customers. Key to our success is developing techniques that allow us to cure parts quickly and with uniform pressure thereby ensuring the parts integrity.

Composite parts replace heavier metal components while optimizing the advantages of designing with greater geometric freedom. As metal is bent and shaped, its strength and fatigue properties quickly deteriorate. Composites have no such limitation. Additional benefits of composites include the potential to reduce overall part count by molding in hardware and the “hook” attachments required for cushions.

Faced with a challenging air travel market, the major airlines are focused on improving customer satisfaction and their own financial stability. As such, airlines are requesting an increase in the use of composites to reduce weight, recurring costs, and facilitate improvements in seating comfort.

Instrumental to starting the process of building a composite part of integrity is cutting precise material patterns. Our computer controlled automated cutting equipment does just that. After our raw materials are unrolled and stabilized onto the cutting table our precision cutting head cuts our lay-up patterns in preparation for part lay-up.

After our parts are properly cured they require some finishing touches. The fabrication process is completed by placing the part into a fixture within a computer controlled CNC machine. With the part locked in place the legs are cut to length, holes are drilled, and the part is otherwise customized to our customer’s specification. This finishing process is all done with precision and speed.

Prior to shipment the outer geometry of every part is “fit checked”, the structure is “proof-load” tested, and the part is weighed. These tests act as reliable indicators that the part has been built and consolidated per the process and product specifications. In addition, our process is periodically checked by testing parts to destruction to verify our process is in control and producing parts that meet the intended technical requirements.

Project by Fluidesign