IDEKO focuses on sustainability and digitization in the aerospace industry at JEC World 2024

The Research center will once again be present at the international composites fair, which will be held in Paris from March 5th to 7th.

It will showcase its knowledge, capabilities, and experience in advanced manufacturing processes of composite materials to reduce the environmental footprint of aerospace production.

The company will once again have a prominent presence at the international  JEC World fair. It will present its technological offering for composite manufacturing, based on two fundamental pillars: sustainability and digitization.

From March 5th to 7th, IDEKO will exhibit its capabilities and technological innovations in this field, primarily focused on automating and increasing the efficiency of aerospace production.

Specifically, IDEKO will exhibit in SpainPavilionV, located in hall 6, booth 108 in front of the Mobility Planet. The exhibition will highlight the expertise acquired in different European-scale research projects, showcasing the implementation of advanced composite manufacturing processes, all carried out within their cutting edge facilities.

One notable example is the INFINITE initiative, funded by the European Union, in which IDEKO lead a technological consortium that seeks to develop digitally sensorized aerospace composites to monitor the manufacturing of components and their structural health throughout their lifecycle.

Additionally, it will also offer a complete manufacturing solution based on photopolymerization, also known as ultraviolet (UV) curing, as an alternative to develop circular and efficient composite material manufacturing technologies through the results obtained so far in the research project.

IDEKO's expertise in this field will also be evident in its advances in the synthesis of a new thermoplastic resin processable via a liquid phase as well as the development of fuselage panels for the new regional hybrid-electric aircraft of the European Clean Aviation initiative.

The Research center's innovations at JEC World 2024 also include research in robotics and automation technologies aimed at reducing emissions and the environmental footprint of manufacturing composite materials in the aerospace sector. Additionally it will showcase the development of a flexible markerless positioning system using photogrammetry integrated into collaborative robots and compensated with external artificial vision systems.

Cutting Edge Facilities

To carry out the developments that will be presented at the fair, the Basque technological center has state-of-the-art facilities and several pilot cells. These include the Automated Dry Material Placement (ADMP) manufacturing cell, tailored for aeronautical components production; and the fiberglass part manufacturing cell using UV cured pre-impregnated materials.

Additionally, a robotic cell is featured. It is composed of two robots equipped with a photogrammetry-based positioning system. These robots work synchronously in the assembly of large aerospace parts. Moreover, IDEKO houses multiple laboratories equipped with sensorization technologies for both process and product characterization. Furthermore, it collaborates with several universities in the Basque Country to enhance its technological offerings.